I see what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. I think the default setting is “the laws that are currently passed,” in the mode of objects in motion tend to remain in motion. IOW, if Congress just passed a continuing budget every year, the country would basically truck along, whereas if they funded nothing, the country would fall apart.
Changing from that default is absolutely legit, if you have the votes to do it. If Congress had the votes to override a veto (much less get it past the Senate), that’d be fine. But it’s not legitimate for them to refuse to pass anything unless they get their way on this. Going for what you call the default is really going for the “kill the government” option, and that’s not an okay option.
And intimidation? Why is that brushed aside without comment?
Recall, if you will, the sequester. How many times did you hear it said, that won’t happen, its too stupid, everybody knows its too stupid to slash an arbitrary number from the budget. Happened. Same deal with the shutdown, but with noticeably less conviction, they won’t do it, can’t happen, too stupid. Uh-huh.
Maybe we don’t really know how bad a debt ceiling renege would be, but that doesn’t make it any better as a form of intimidation. It only means that the people who are applying the threat don’t know either, their irresponsibility is multiplied by their ignorance. If that’s not a form of intimidation, the word has no meaning.
Surely, there is no threat of force, save for the kitten. The blender has no concerns in the matter.
So your position is that the baseline is whatever the last budget was, and if the House wants to change that, they need to persuade the Senate and the President that the change is a good one. If they fail to persuade them, then they are obligated to continue the identical level of funding. Is that right?
Sure, IF the union is striking to get major benefit increases while offering a 6 week commitment to work, with no union concessions, after previously negotiating the framework they are now seeking to change.
Oh, and there is also a recognized formal process to change the work rules, and they’ve been unable to gather enough votes to make the change they want.
Okay, after thinking about it for a bit, I’m going to reluctantly say yes. It’s not an ideal solution, but I don’t think there’s any better one.
The current budget reflects funding the programs that Congress has agreed to have in place. Those agreements have already been made through the appropriate channels. If anyone wants to modify those agreements, the appropriate way to do that is by getting others to agree to those modifications–and that’s where good-faith negotiation comes in.
There needs to be a baseline because the folks in power are a bunch of knuckleheads who don’t know how to reach an agreement, and that agreement may not happen in a timely manner. If the baseline is no funding, then we end up in the idiotic situation we’re in now, and that’s not acceptable.
So the only acceptable baseline I can think of is the current budget: if nobody agrees to changes, we keep doing what we’re doing.
I don’t think that the House is legally obligated to take this course, but I do think they’re ethically obligated to do so.
Why isn’t it equally ethical to pass a CR for everything but the disputed piece? Nothing is being held hostage in that scenario other than the matter over which there is sincere disagreement.
My mind is not made up either, but I still think the line of good faith negotiation has to be drawn based on the content of the demand, using rules for assessing the content that are politically neutral, as Harry Reid did for Iraq.
(And I continue to think the debt ceiling threats are way out of bounds.)
Because the law creating the PPACA was passed. Your suggestion would require that no battle is truly concluded. Pass whatever you want. We’ll just delete the funding later. Oh, and if you don’t let us delete the funding later, we’ll hold up funding for EVERYTHING until we get our way.
At some point, the Republicans will pass some sort of legislation that the Democrats find unpleasant. Will these same tactics be okay then? Somehow, I doubt it.
Our system of government cannot work (and is not working) that way.
Because that’s making an end-run around a previous agreement. Everyone’s already agreed on the disputed piece, and there’s a system in place for objecting to the disputed piece and resolving that disagreement. Passing a CR for everything else is an attempt to use a different method for resolving disagreement, and it only works if the person using the method cares less for the country than the person not using the method.
We don’t want to encourage such a method to be used, because of its unpleasant way of distributing rewards–it’s as if Solomon granted the baby to the woman willing to have it cut in half.
The default is to fund the things already agreed on. If you want to change from that default, make your case. Don’t threaten.
No battle is ever truly concluded, which is how it should be in a democracy. Of course everything is still in play. The Constitution itself is still in play. Saying that the House is the one “hold[ing] up funding for EVERYTHING until we get our way” has no objective basis unless there is an argument that the content of their demand is somehow objectively unreasonable, or there is something asymmetric about their refusal vis-a-vis the other branchs’ refusal to agree to fund everything else if the missing piece isn’t added. What I’m arguing is that you have to reach the content of the demand to determine which side is the one who bears responsibility for “hold[ing] up funding for EVERYTHING until we get our way.”
I think there are two arguments in there, one that I’m not sold on and one that I’m unclear on:
(1) Passing a clean CR except for a disputed piece means the House (and not the President) is responsible for whether that 99% CR gets made into law or not. That’s not at all obvious to me as a general principle. You can just as correctly say that the President (and Senate) are holding hostage the rest of government to save the disputed piece. I think that assignment of responsibility only makes sense when you look at the content of the demand.
(2) The only appropriate time to hold firm on a position as to how to spend the Treasury’s money is [___________]. Is the blank the debate over the actual budget legislation as opposed to a continuing resolution, or is the blank the original debate over the passage of the government program being funded?
Because there is no disputed piece; the fact that a minority don’t like it does not mean there is a dispute which demands resolution. It was resolved when Congress voted on it, the President signed it and the Supreme Court ruled on it. If the minority wants to undo that process, there is a constitutionally prescribed process: win more elections. If your ideas have merit, that should be no problem. If the voters remain unpersuaded, I suggest the problems do not lie with anyone else but the minority.
Ok. So is your position that every program ever passed must be fully funded by the House unless they can persuade the Senate and President to repeal or modify the program?
If so, here’s my first question: What does it mean to be fully funded? Funded at the level of whose budget request?
I think the clearest illustration of this point is, what if the House decided to hold off on reinstating the government until their demands were met, and their demands were impeachment proceedings? Same tactics, same options. Either the manner of negotiation is valid or it isn’t. I think nobody in their right mind could say it is.
A third option is that whether the negotiation is valid depends on the content of the demand. I would suggest some criteria:
(1) Is the demand effectively attempting to repeal a law, or is argument over the funding levels consistent with the nature of the law? (For example, I think de-funding Obamacare is essentially an attempt to repeal it. I don’t think altering the level of funding for, say, Pell Grants is an attempt to repeal Pell Grants.)
(2) Is the demand politically reasonable in that it is realistically within the bargaining space of the existing alignment of the other branches?
Considering that the Senate and President vote on the budget… yes.
Or does the House have some sort of super special powers that give it unilateral control over the budget?
The funnest part of this whole thing is that we all know a clean CR would pass the House, if it were put up for vote. The House’s CR did not pass the Senate, when the Senate chose to vote on it, and would not pass the President, if he got a chance to vote on it. That is a HUGE point that is underappreciated.
We don’t have a clean CR because House Leadership won’t let the House vote on it. It has nothing to do with not having enough support to pass a vote.
So are they allowed to say no to a particular budget as distinct from a continuing resolution? Is that the time they can say no?
Or must they say no when a given program is first legislated, and that is the only time they can say no?
I agree this is a good point. I think this is another factor that distinguishes this current strategy from good faith negotiation, but I also think it distinguishes the current strategy from the general legislative tactic of refusing to fund a particular program.
Budgeting is bookkeeping, not legislation. It shouldn’t be a replacement for managing the operation of the country through legislation.
They have full rights to legislate change, only they fail over and over again because they don’t have enough votes to push it through.
This is like your wife refusing to co-sign the mortgage check unless you drop HBO from your cable package. Yes, she can discuss your cable options. No, this isn’t an appropriate way to do it.
I don’t feel like that really answers the question. Are you saying that the House should not ever hold firm on its view of where the budget should be set? That no matter the reasonableness of its demands on funding, it is always the House’s fault if the Senate and President don’t agree with the House’s proposed budget?
I agree with the sentiment that certain things are in-bounds for budgetary negotiations and certain things are out-of-bounds. But I think that is a question of the *content *of the demand, and not a question of the general tactic of sticking to a particular position on funding.
Is it reasonable to draw an analogy between the behaviour of Republicans here and activist judges? On the basis that they’re utilising power granted by necessity for other purpose, creating their own intepretations of what they are allowed to do away from the spirit of the law?