It’s pretty damn disingenuous to talk of this tactic as a mere difference of opinion on funding priorities, and about the appropriate time and method to come an agreement. :dubious: No, friend, it’s about sticking it to Obama somehow, and I think you know that.
“Holding firm”, as you put it so charitably, is not a valid or respectable negotiating tactic, not if the party using understands and respects its responsibility to the entire nation. A “principled” :rolleyes: insistence that the majority conform to the will of a faction of a minority of one branch, or else, is not service to the people they represent and the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
They are not “setting a budget” they are singling out individual programs that they don’t like and using the budget process to change them.
This isn’t a matter of “we need to find XX billion dollars to make ends meet”. If it WAS that, they would happily entertain options like cutting military program Z, or increasing tax Y, or changing entitlement Alpha. That is negotiation over the budget.
This is entirely a matter of “I don’t like Obamacare” and using the budget process to screw with it. That’s why it’s disingenuous to imply that the Dems aren’t “negotiating”. The Repubs don’t want to negotiate to find the dollar savings they want to close the budget. They want to fuck up Obamacare, and want the Democrats to “negotiate” on how fucked up it’s going to get.
Yes. This is how our government is supposed to work.
At whatever budget request can by mutually agreed on by the House and Senate. If the House is willing to give up on some of their cherished ideals, the Senate may be persuaded to do likewise. However, damaging Obamacare is never going to happen; there is nothing conservatives can offer that will cause the Democrats to repeal, defund or diminish it in any substantial way. That ship has sailed, and conservatives need to recognized that elections have consequences.
I don’t understand how that works from a pragmatic point of view. It seems that would mean the Post Office, for instance, would automatically be getting a ton more money because they say they need it to deliver six days a week.
Or NASA never would have had their budgets cut, especially say in 1963, while they were under directive to reach the moon.
While the Republicans are bringing it to an (unwise) extreme, using the budget to establish scope and pace and whether a program is first class or economy fare is appropriate and common.
And I can certainly recall any number of times when the news flashed that Congress was removing funding for this or that program as a means to killing the program. It’s just usually in a MUCH smaller scope.
And I’m not in disagreement with the idea that it is an inappropriate means in this case, but I’m not ready to throw out the bath water and baby.
Sure; but both houses, the House and the Senate have to agree, and the President must sign the budget. The House does not have unilateral power to defund programs funded by law.
I’m saying that the default setting is the level that’s been funded, or that’s been projected to be funded: full funding of all current programs is the default.
IT’S TOTALLY FINE TO DEVIATE FROM THIS DEFAULT. But the way to do that is to negotiate a deviation: “Hey, I’ll reluctantly give in to your request for higher corporate tax rates, if in exchange, you’ll drop the tax on medical devices.”
What’s not fine is to say that, without a deviation, you’re going to stop the budget process altogether. And the person asking for the deviation? That’s clearly the person stopping the process, not the person asking to maintain the course already agreed on.
I agree. As I’ve tried to make clear, I’m arguing that when you look to the actual content of their demands then it becomes clear how this is a bad faith tactic. The point I’m defending is that what makes it a bad faith tactic is the content of the demand, not the generic fact that they are making some demand about funding.
This response is circular. When is the inviolable baseline of required funding (which cannot be altered unless there is agreement between the Senate and the House) set, according to your view, if not in the budget negotiations?
When was this default level set, in your view? At whatever time that was, would it have been appropriate for the House to say “we think cutting $1 from foreign aid is absolutely our bottom line and we won’t vote for a budget that does not do that”?
Then they should be ready to concede a corresponding amount to the other party on one of their pet budget items. Things get done when both sides give up something.
With all due awe, and mercifully free of intentional snark, are you offering this line of inquiry as an abstract question, primarily for intellectual shits and giggles?
The default is set bill by bill, so to speak. When a bill is approved, there are projected costs associated with it. It’s totally appropriate for either side to insist on funding at those projected costs, because those are the costs folks have agreed to when the bill went through the Schoolhouse Rock process.
If you want to cut $1 from foreign aid, absolutely go for it. What are you going to offer?
If you offer to add $1 to corporate taxes, then your opposition can take or leave the offer. If they take it, great, you have a deal. If they don’t, you’ve got two ethical choices:
Change your offer; or
Go ahead with the default level of funding.
Going for option 3:
3) Being a jerk who insists that the agreement be unilaterally broken and threatening to take the country down with you if folks don’t give in
elucidator - No. I think it is important to figure out what demands are reasonable in this process and what demands are not. I do not agree with the view that says any demand the House makes can be rejected out of hand and it’s the House fault if it then fails to pass the levels of funding the Senate and President want.
LHoD and Fear Itself:
For many government programs and activities, there is no such thing as the “initial funding for the bill”–there is only last year’s appropriation or the last multi-year appropriation (or, alternatively, the first appropriation for that program or activity).
Some programs passed into law have yet to have any appropriation and the initial law did not set any appropriation amount. So I think your proposition is just nonsensical for much of government.
Moreover, your argument is that the House must appropriate the same amount of money they appropriated last time unless they can reach an agreement with the Senate and President to do something differently. But that effectively negates the role of the House in setting spending priorities. You’re saying we could elect a 100% Tea Party House, and so long as the President just threatened to veto any change in spending they wanted then the House would be obligated to change nothing. Indeed, even if Democrats just had 41 Senators, they could effectively prevent any change to government since the House and President would be obligated to continue current levels of funding in perpetuity. I think that cannot and should not be correct. There are some issues for which the branches will share responsibility if they cannot come to an agreement, and there are other for which the demand is unreasonable and the demand-maker is therefore solely responsible.
That damn constitution - explicitly giving the House power of the purse.
“It’s the law, approved by both houses, signed by the president, and blessed by SCOTUS”
The constitution is the highest law of the land, and that law permits defunding the government, in whole or piece meal.
“Elections have consequences!”
Exactly. Enough people who support shutting down the government got elected to the House.
“They are hostage takers and economic terrorists”
Then surrender. Or don’t - if you think surrender is a worse option. Both sides have a choice in this game of economic chicken.
That’s why I said “projected costs.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but the OMB projects costs for every bill that’s seriously considered, right? And when folks vote on bills, those projections are known, right? So that’s the point at which folks are agreeing on what to spend. You wanna change it? Negotiate to do so.
Sure–at which point the president and senate couldn’t lead the agenda at all. We’d be stuck in stasis until one group of jokers or another were voted out of office.
As I said earlier, this isn’t ideal. But the alternative is to allow any jerk to shut down government if others don’t surrender to their demands, and that’s a much worse alternative.
In case folks have forgotten, I’m convinced it’s a legal alternative. But it’s still lousy.
No, only one side can actually take action to end it. Only Boehner can bring a vote to the floor to end the shutdown and prevent default. It doesn’t matter what Obama does- he can beg, plead, and even totally capitulate, but only Boehner and the House can actually end the shutdown and prevent default. And there’s already a bill, passed by the Senate, that would end it- but Boehner won’t allow a vote.
Yes, I think that’s an extremely reasonable analogy. They’re using the power they legitimately have, within the letter of its limits, but flouting what I’d argue is the wise, proper course for the legislature to follow. Like activist judges, they have the power but choose to use it to make their role far more intrusive than a proper balance of powers contemplates.