I think you and I basically agree here, except that I think it’s acceptable to use the word “extortion” in a metaphorical, not a legal, sense to describe the action they’re taking.
That would end the immediate standoff, but would reward the tactic and encourage the jerks using it to use it indefinitely. Boehner is uniquely positioned to discourage the tactic’s use in the future.
In point of fact, and with respect to our esteemed speaker, “there aren’t the votes” in the senate to pass the poison pill funding bill that the house passed. So in fact there is nothing right now for Obama to sign even if he wanted to.
So you are wrong, only Boehner has the ability to take an action that would end this right now. No other person is standing in the way, or has the power themselves to end this.
This, like everything else you said, is technically true and totally meaningless. If I, to borrow Terr’s analogy (sorry, it’s just so great that I can’t stop using it), hold a knife up to a puppy and threaten to kill it unless you pay me money, we both have a choice. But you’re the one acting horribly and setting up a terrible situation, and you’re the one with the ethical obligation to end it. I have choices, but you’ve set me up with two basically bad choices: I don’t give in, and the puppy dies, or I do give in, and you do this kind of thing a lot more.
Only you [hypothetical you] have the good choice: put down the knife, you sonofabitch.
You’re saying OMB’s projected costs should (ethically) bind the Congress to the amount they must appropriate unless they can agree otherwise?
I don’t agree. I’m offering an alternative model. The alternative model is that some demands that result in an impasse make the impasse the responsibility of the demand-maker, and some are the result of the demand-refuser, and some are the responsibility of both. It depends on the content of the demand. In other words, sometimes the demand-maker is the jerk. Sometimes its the other guys who are the jerks. Sometimes they are all jerks.
Let’s say that in 2009 we send $10 million to Indonesia for flood relief. In 2010, the House thinks we’d be better off sending that money to Japan for earthquake relief. Are you saying that if they refuse to sign overall funding legislation that sends $10 million to Indonesia again that they are the jerks?
I thought the Senate voted on it, changed it, and sent it back.
OMB, or last year’s costs, yes. That “unless” is a giant deal, though: almost certainly people can agree to do otherwise.
In your scenario, both sides are jerks. The pro-Indonesia side are jerks for not looking at how things have actually changed. The anti-Indonesia side are jerks for closing down the government over this issue.
And in either case, I think this is a bad example, because flood relief falls under a general heading of foreign aid for disaster relief: that’s really what continues from year to year. That’s totally different from changing funding for an ongoing program.
Correct. The clean bill is on Boehner’s desk. The whole Cruz filibuster debacle was supposed to prevent the Senate from stripping the poison pill out of that bill. He failed, they stripped it, voted on the clean bill, passed it, and sent it back to the house. That is where we currently are as I understand it. Waiting for Boehner to rise to the occasion as it were.
I don’t see any inherent reason why an OMB projection should ethically bind a Congressman. I understand your argument as a practicality–it discourages shutdown and provides a roadmap for funding the absence of agreement. But I don’t think it’s a better ethical rule than the one I’m proposing.
Well, changing the example to meet your point is trivial. Maybe there were 10 huge disasters in 1970 and none in 1971. I think the jerks would be the ones who insisted on 1970 levels of disaster spending, and not those who insisted on a cut.
The bottom line is that which side is a jerk (or both) depends on the content and context, not the tactic of refusing to sign.
I think it’s fair to dispute that this is about funding at all. The goal is to disable the law, make it inoperable.
I wouldn’t mind them placing this law at the top of the list of items to defund in an effort to manage spending. That’s where negotiation and compromise come in, we each pick things to give up, everybody’s ox get a bit scratched, and we move on.
That’s too generous, in my view. The goal is to keep the law operating in many respects (the part that don’t require funding) but to make it less popular (but keeping the requirements while cutting the subsidies, etc.).
Repeal would be less damaging than de-funding.
Because that’s what Congress agreed to fund when it agreed to the bill. In the same way that a President is bound to honor treaties signed by his predecessors, Congress should be bound to honor laws passed by its predecessors. In both cases, if you don’t like the deal previously made, you can negotiate to change it.
Again, I think it’s different. Disaster funding isn’t part of the regular and projected budget; it really is the sort of thing that has a baseline of zero (as in, if there are no disasters, we expect not to fund disaster relief). That’s totally unlike a program like ACA, in which there is a baseline of what the program is expected to cost.
Sure. But the Republicans in the House demonstrated they are so weak, and their offer so unpersuasive, Obama knew they would blink, and take all the blame to boot. He gains power for the Presidency and makes it much less likely this will occur in the future, bringing long term stability. More people would be hurt if Republicans were tempted to do this every six months. Some pain was inevitable. Yes, absolutely worth a short shutdown, and a win for the American people.
No, it most certainly is not. It is a third party’s often disputed projection of the full financial consequences of a bill assuming certain appropriations and other assumptions.
The part where Congress agrees to fund a bill is when they sign legislation funding a bill. Often, that is a separate and separately negotiated part.
I think that distinction is also ad hoc, and we could then move to examples of the purchase of jet fighters or many other government activities. However, I think you’re coming around to the notion that we do actually have to look to the *content *of the demand to determine it’s reasonableness. What you’re saying now is that we look to the content to determine whether the baseline of funding was genuinely set in the initial legislation or whether there is some other baseline.
I think if we kept going back and forth I would move you even further along on that spectrum of the necessity of looking to the content. But my time is running short this afternoon.
Well, apart from this having a certain flavor of Vizzini’s poison wine strategy, I suppose you could be right.
I was simply answering the “House is the sole actor that can remove the shutdown,” comment.
On that basis, then, would you say there’s some inherent “problem” in the way they’re choosing to go about this - the subject and politics aside? That is, that this is behaviour that, even if it was being used for something we strongly agreed with, we would have reservations about?
Indeed. And, in the past, this meant that any member of the House could use the deadlock to bring the matter to a vote. Interestingly, the House changed the rules just in time! to prevent such a ghastly outcome, and now only the majority leadership can do such a thing.
Very thoughtful of Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor to tuck this rule change into place and prevent the Dems from being embarrassed, since, as Speaker Boehner insists, there are not the votes needed to pass it. Not going to test that theory, mind you, you can just take his word for it. Or not, you don’t have to take his word for it, you can just shut the fuck up about it, if you prefer.
Process sketched out in the piece from Daily Kos.
(Your correspondent is well aware that this is a hive nodule for lefty cooties…)
Nice try :). I’m not moving closer to what you’re saying, though: you’re simply showing that not all government funding is analogous to ACA funding. When I’m talking about the baseline being the previous year’s budget, I thought it’d be implied that I meant for ongoing programs, not for one-off expenses (I certainly wouldn’t have expected 1977’s budget to include appropriations for celebrating the bicentennial). To the extent that you’ve persuaded me to make the implicit explicit, sure, score one for you; but the underlying principle–that people have voted on and agreed to spending already, and that that should be the starting point for negotiations for the new budget–isn’t something I’ve been persuaded from.
I think I’m still right about that- the Senate voted on the bill, changed it, and sent it back- but Boehner won’t allow a vote.
Except this exact power of the House, that to defund the government, the power of the purse, is explicitly granted by the constitution. It is not at all analogous to murdering puppies. It’s also not hostage taking or terrorism - both outside the law. Shutting down the government is one of the powers of the House.
Where do you guys get the idea that budget bills *end *in the House as well as start there, or that the House somehow has veto power over the Senate and the President and their role is simply to rubber-stamp? Have you actually read the whole Constitution?
I mean, come on.