Republicans Are Barely Trying to Avoid a Shutdown

(Bloomberg View) -- No matter how unlikely it looks, Republicans will probably find a way to keep the government open beyond the current Friday deadline. But they sure are making things difficult for themselves. 

To begin with, as Congress scholar Josh Huder explained, Republican leaders put themselves in a difficult position by failing to get their work done in a timely fashion:

A bipartisan fix for ACA insurance payments was crafted by Senators Alexander (R-TN) and Murray (D-WA) but has not received floor time. The FAA reauthorization has stalled in the House. DACA and CHIP remain unresolved issues, creating uncertainty for millions of beneficiaries. Instead of addressing these issues earlier, leaders packed the schedule with easily passed messaging bills, or in the case of the Senate, easily confirmable judges and executive branch nominees. Congressional capacity under Ryan and McConnell's leadership has become so limited that Congress has ignored its basic and most critical legislative responsibilities in favor of passing big policy goals.

Part of this is capacity -- the amount of legislative work that is being processed. Part of it, however, seems to be about leadership choosing not to lead. Republicans simply don't have the votes to do whatever they want on every issue. In the House, they aren't unified enough; in the Senate, the filibuster means that the 51 Republicans fall short even if they are unified. That means they need to craft compromises with other members of Congress, namely Democrats. Instead, Republican leaders continue to be paralyzed by the self-imposed need to placate a relatively small group of radicals in the House Freedom Caucus. Catering to their preferences makes it difficult to build a House majority and impossible in most cases to reach 60, or sometimes even a simple majority, in the Senate. 

During the brief period after House Speaker John Boehner announced his retirement but before he actually stepped down, Republican leaders chose a different strategy. Suddenly, they were productive. But Paul Ryan didn't seem to take away any lessons from that era.

Then President Donald Trump added another level of chaos to the situation.

Thursday's edition -- an attack on the current Republican strategy of including CHIP authorization along with a one-month funding bill -- sent Hill Republicans scrambling around trying to figure out what Trump thought he was saying. Last week, his repeated flip flopping on immigration trashed another potential deal. As NBC's Mark Murray said, "To govern, you need to know where the governing party stands." It's true that congressional Republicans could just ignore the president and assume, in the end, that he would sign whatever they pass. But the structure of the government encourages congressional leaders to look to the White House for coordination when they happen to be on the same team. It's a hard habit to break.

Compounding the problem is another habit that Republicans can't shake: acting as if they remain in the minority, where forcing messaging votes is often all a party can do, instead of accepting that the majority brings with it the responsibilities of governing. The CHIP strategy is (was?) to find something that sounded really good (funding for children's insurance) that Democrats nevertheless would oppose (in this case because Democrats believe a DACA fix is also urgent and don't want to give away their leverage on short-term funding bills unless they get both CHIP and DACA resolved). In other words, instead of putting a priority on keeping the government open, Republicans were choosing a strategy to shut the government's doors in order to blame Democrats for it. Not only is it unlikely to work out well for them in terms of public opinion, but it also strengthens the Democrats' position as negotiations continue. 

Even more perplexing: As Republicans in Congress maneuver to get a shutdown and pin it on the Democrats, the Office of Management and Budget is maneuvering to make a shutdown as invisible and painless to the public as possible. Of course, Trump doesn't help by babbling about the military, which is unaffected by a government shutdown anyway. So the president is highlighting (falsely) the damage that allowing funding to lapse would cause, while his administration is working to be able to downplay it. And none of that appears to be coordinated at all with what congressional Republicans are up to. 

A better strategy for Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would focus on completing legislative work that previous leaders of Congress tended to accept as their responsibility. They can start by accepting that they'll have to make some concessions to Democrats and then try to cut the best deal they can to avoid shutting down the government.

After all, it doesn't appear that most Republicans care very much (or even oppose) most of what Democrats are demanding on several of these programs; there appear to be large chamber majorities for protecting the Dreamers, funding children's health, and for the Alexander-Murray insurance payments plan. As Greg Sargent notes, Democrats have already expressed willingness to give Republicans much of what they ask for in return for things which Republicans don't even oppose. So if Ryan and McConnell cut the deals that are there to be cut, ignoring the radicals and assuming Trump will be happy to sign and take credit for anything, there really isn't a lot of heavy lifting remaining.  

There are times when the legislative process requires sheer brilliance and fierce commitment. This is not one of those times. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

1. They may also still fear his attacks, even though he's long since been proven a paper tiger whose insults disappear without leaving much of a mark. If so, they should wise up quickly. 

2. They still have a ways to go on full-year funding, but with the rest of it off the table a short-term funding extension while they hammer out that deal will be easy. 

To contact the author of this story: Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mike Nizza at mnizza3@bloomberg.net.

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