They want to defund ObamaCare, that much we know. (And so do I.) Any attempt to do so will certainly lead to a showdown since Democrats will likely refuse to allow any spending measure to pass without ObamaCare funds. No spending measure, no way to pay for government operations, ergo shutdown.
Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report presents the issue in the standard Washington spin of the day:
Count Texas Sen. Ted Cruz among the growing ranks of Republicans who want to shut down the government -- because Republicans always look good when threatening a shutdown -- over the party's Quixotic quest to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Cruz is in Iowa today laying the groundwork for his presumptive 2016 presidential bid and,
according to a Tweet from National Review Online's Robert Costa (h/t
Dave Weigel), told conservatives this morning that he won't support continued funding of the government without a full defunding of Obamacare. That makes him the third GOP senator this month to push that line, joining
Utah conservative Mike Lee and Florida's Marco Rubio, who told a Weekly Standard breakfast last week that "I will not vote for a continuing resolution
unless it defunds Obamacare." (At the risk of being pedantic: The current continuing resolution runs through the end of the current fiscal year; the next funding fight will be over regular appropriations bills, not another continuing resolution.)
See how Schlesinger's logic works. Because Cruz says he won't vote for a spending measure unless it defunds ObamaCare, Cruz wants to shut down the government. Has any member of Congress in the history of this nation ever indicated that he or she would not vote for a spending measure unless (add whatever condition you like here)? Or is Cruz the first to do so? Up until now, everyone has always said they will vote for whatever spending measure is offered because
the government must keep operating no matter what!
That is, of course, ridiculous. Budget negotiations always involve members of Congress from both parties making demands and indicating the conditions under which their votes can be had. Remember, in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan would send budget proposals to Tip O'Neill who would immediately declare them "dead on arrival"?
How dare Tip O'Neill threaten to shut down the government!
Except that O'Neill wasn't doing that at all. He was negotiating for his own spending priorities. That's the normal process of passing a budget. Reagan understood that, and even though Democrats controlled the House for every year of his presidency (and the Senate for the last two), there was always a budget passed.
What's different today is that we no longer pass budgets. Instead, the government keeps operating on a series of continuing resolutions that basically reflect only Obama's spending priorities (and assume, by the way, that the spending level bloated by the $862 billion stimulus package of 2009 is forever). If the Republican majority in the House tells Obama and Harry Reid that cannot continue - that they can no longer just have whatever they want - Obama and Reid pick up their ball and go home. And when serious people like Cruz and Paul say Republicans should not back down, the media shrieks that they are "advocating a government shutdown".
By the way, here's what Paul actually says about the notion of a shutdown. The
Louisville Courier-Journal:
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul argued Wednesday that he does not support a shutdown of the federal government in an effort to defund the Affordable Care Act -- known as Obamacare -- but still wants Republicans to fight for changes in the reform.
"I am in favor of using our leverage to make it less bad," he told reporters before speaking at the Louisville Forum Luncheon on a litany of issues that included coal, immigration reform and voter identification at the polls.
Some Republicans in the House say they will refuse to vote for any spending measure that provides funds for the controversial health care act, leading to speculation about a potential government shutdown at the end of September.
Paul said he would likely oppose a stop-gap spending measure that would not allow government to continue operations unless it sets a course toward balancing the federal budget. He added that while he would prefer to defund Obamacare, "I also know that we don't control all of the government, so we fight for what we can get."
This is the epitome of a tough and also sensible position. You fight for what you can achieve. Media liars are jumping all over Cruz and Paul because they refuse to unilaterally surrender in a fight that will be difficult to resolve. By that logic, everyone who ever dug in on a budget fight "threatened to shut down the government." The most pathetic thing about this is that it seems most Senate Republicans are reacting exactly the way Democrats and the media want: They are terrified by the prospect of getting blamed for a government shutdown, and are letting it be known that, oh no, they will never dig in for such a fight.
That's how you end up with nominal control of one house of Congress but no impact made on how this nation is governed. If you're more concerned about the media beating you up than you are about the impact of your decisions on the country, why did you run for office in the first place?
A new edition of Dan's book "Powers and Principalities" is now available in hard copy and e-book editions.
