The GOP Threatens Yet Another Government Shutdown

I have a book, Linda R. Monk's The Words we Live By, that contains the complete text of the US Constitution with intercalated explanations of the interpretations that various Supreme Court rulings over the centuries have settled on. It may not turn me into a Supreme Court Justice, but it's a good starting place for an ordinary citizen who gives a damn about process in lawmaking.

I have read that book perhaps four times through in the 12 years since the first edition was published. In it, I have found nothing that would indicate that members of Congress can use the threat of a government shutdown to accomplish by blackmail something they cannot bring about by the well-defined process of legislation (see video of "I'm just a bill"). Can Congress really do that? Maybe; they've come close in the past. Can they do it legally? That's not nearly as clear. Doing so certainly belies the notion that our government is a representative democracy.

I also find no support for the legitimacy of forcing the implementation of a law that is detrimental to one specific individual or nongovernmental institution. Such a law is not quite a bill of attainder, but this particular threatened act is damned close, because it would effectively "execute" Planned Parenthood without any sort of due process. (And we all know, don't we, that corporations are people; the R's told us so...)

But that doesn't seem to matter much to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Hell) or the Teabaggers. To them, it's all an exercise in maximizing their power to get what they want, and if the process is illegitimate, well, so are they, and they just don't care what anyone else thinks. Or votes.

Blackmail... an evil, ugly technique... is what the Tea Party is all about.

Have a nice day. </irony>

(Usual reminder: IANAL. - SB)

Krugman: No Happy Days

Krugman, just after the shutdown ended:

The government is reopening, and we didn’t default on our debt. Happy days are here again, right?

Well, no. For one thing, Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves going through it all over again in a few months. ...

... the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. ... And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.

...

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that Macroeconomic Advisers overstated the case. The main driver of their estimates is the sharp fall since 2010 in discretionary spending as a share of G.D.P. — that is, in spending that, unlike spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare, must be approved by Congress each year. Since the biggest problem the U.S. economy faces is still inadequate overall demand, this fall in spending has depressed both growth and employment.

What’s more, the report doesn’t take into account the effect of other bad policies that are a more or less direct result of the Republican takeover in 2010. Two big bads stand out: letting payroll taxes rise, and sharply reducing aid to the unemployed even though there are still three times as many people looking for work as there are job openings. Both actions have reduced the purchasing power of American workers, weakening consumer demand and further reducing growth.

...

[Bolds mine. - SB]

The damage is large. Some of the damage is permanent. Most of the damage falls on our society's most disadvantaged people. And Republicans are gearing up to do it all over again in a few months. Do you still insist "both sides do it"? I'm sorry; I don't care what pundit told you on what TV outlet, it's still a baldfaced lie. Republicans, and only Republicans, and only one species of Republicans, do it, damn them.

---

On the positive side, Prose Before Hos has gathered some great cartoons, and quotes the following tweet:

It Is Done: Senate Bill Passes House

About five minutes ago the House passed its agreement to the Senate's version of the bill extending the debt limit and reopening the government. Once Obama signs it... which he promised to do tonight; I saw him say it... the deplorable government shutdown is over. I've read comments to the effect that it may take most federal agencies and departments a while to get up and running again. And I've also read an estimated cost of the whole shutdown as about $24 billion. Thank you, Republican Party... thanks for less than nothing.

'And They Cried Out Again, Cruz-ify Him!'

... Mark 15:13, King James version, give or take a few letters, or a language mixture. As far as I can tell, Grover Norquist is in no mood to forgive Ted Cruz and his fellow defund‑Obamacare pushers, and Norquist is scarcely alone among GOPers in that sentiment. Norquist, out of context but just as clear nonetheless:

I think if you make a mistake as big as what they did, you owe your fellow senators and congressmen a big apology — and your constituents, as well, because nothing they did advanced the cause of repealing or dismantling Obamacare.

If you work among a lot of Republican colleagues, be prepared to dodge all the pointing fingers in the next week or so.

Boehner: 'Fought The Good Fight; Just Didn't Win'

John Boehner said, "We fought the good fight; we just didn't win."

Bull-crackers! That was no "good fight." That was the most irresponsible act by a congressional caucus that I have seen in my 65 years of living. In a just world, that act would result in the total demise of the Republican Party as of the next election.

In the real world, on the other hand... (sigh)

Obama's Offer To GOP: Nothing. GOP's Inevitable Response: Surrender

Please read here and here. Wall Street's message to GOP? Get it over with. Ted Cruz? The Houston Chronicle apologizes... sort of... for having endorsed him. Various House GOPers? Busy berating the National Park Service for having closed parks. (Do TPers think we are as idiotic as they are?) Elijah Cummings (D-MD)? He believes Heritage, not John Boehner, is calling the shots.

This is a sorry, disgraceful business, and it's still not quite over. I wish there were a way the GOP could be made to see what they have wrought, but I'm as certain as I can be that even if they lose congressional seats in 2014, they won't have learned one damned thing.

UPDATE: at last, Cruz says he won't bust the deal. He was mighty quiet for a while there...

Fitch, Fitch, Fitch...

TPM's Igor Bobic:

Credit rating agency Fitch placed U.S. holdings, which remain AAA, on negative watch Tuesday, as Congressional negotiations over the federal debt ceiling stalled just two days before a Thursday deadline.

"Fitch continues to believe that an agreement will be reached to end the current political impasse and raise the U.S. debt ceiling," the agency said in a press release. "Even if the debt limit is not raised before or shortly after 17 October, we assume there is sufficient political will and capacity to ensure that Treasury securities will continue to be honoured in full and on time."

...

It's good of them to cut the US some slack. But I don't like the sound of this...

Luckovich: 'Trick Or Treat... Or Else!'

Default And Prioritizing: The Horrifying Reality

So what's wrong with the course of action many Republicans seem unable to stop babbling about, namely, defaulting, then prioritizing the government's payments (according to what political scheme I wouldn't hazard a guess)? According to Krugman, there are four reasons not to do that; please read and think about them... especially if you are a GOPer facilely advocating this catastrophic strategy. You say you don't want to read Krugman? That's just too bad; you really need to. Stop wasting your time on this blog and go read his reasoning.

Does America Default? Does The GOP Then Collapse? Stay Tuned...

... for the next exciting episode. For the possibility of default, read here. For the latest poll ratings on the GOP's handling of budget talks, read here.

I have seen remarks to the effect that if this goes on any longer, people will learn they can live without a federal government.

Not me. And I don't think very many people really want that, if they think about it for 30 seconds (or 5 minutes, if they are GOPers).

I have, however, started contemplating life without Republicans, and I believe I can handle that just fine...

Even Heritage Action Opposes Conditioning Govt. Restart On Defunding Obamacare

This was bound to happen at some point: the CEO of a powerful conservative group, Heritage Action (related to Heritage Foundation... link is to wiki, not group website), announces his opposition to what the House is doing. It's not that they oppose defunding Obamacare (see graphic at right), but that they oppose tying that act to the threat of government default.

Via DSWright at FDL, from Howard Fineman at HuffPo:

...

Michael Needham, CEO of the powerful group Heritage Action, said that he opposed conditioning a crucial vote to increase the government's borrowing authority on the group's main goal: defunding Obamacare.

Under questioning at a breakfast with reporters, hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Needham, a product of the Stanford Business School, conceded that failure to raise the debt ceiling would indeed disrupt the global economy.

...

I can't quite manage to put it in words of one syllable for the infantile Tea Partiers who need to understand this, but here it is, children, in words suitable for grownups: a default would be bad for all Americans and most people in the developed world, but it would be catastrophic for a central element of the Republican base... the business community. TPers: stand down before you fall down!

Oh, Great— 'Constitution' Truckers To Clog Roadways

Hunter Walker of TPMMuckraker:

'Constitution' Truckers Plan To Shut Down D.C. With Protest Convoy

A group billing itself as the "Independent Truckers of America" has vowed to flood the nation's roadways this weekend with a "Ride For The Constitution" in order to "save our nation" from "domestic enemies such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, Lindsay Graham and John McCain."

According to the Ride For The Constitution website, this "Truckers Shutdown" will feature "potentially hundreds of thousands of truckers and millions of citizens" converging Friday through Sunday on the nation's capital. There will also be affiliated rallies at rest areas and displays on highway overpasses. The faces of this event are a right wing radio host, outspoken gun activist and "libtard" hater Mark Kessler, as well as a former trucker who believes President Barack Obama is "a radical Islamist."

...

What could possibly go wrong?

(I have stripped the link to the truckers' web site because it starts immediately with audio that sounds like it might be a right-wing radio station. Go through the TPM article if you want to subject yourself to that; they have a link.)

Once And For All

A long-ago girlfriend of mine used to tease people who said they were going to do something (organize their lives, sort their paper files, clean up their living space, etc.) "once and for all." She would say, with an impish gleam in her eye, "After you do that, then are you going to eat once and for all?"

Back in Newt Gingrich's heyday, many members of the GOP expressed an intent to gain and maintain control of the U.S. government on an ongoing, indefinite basis. They probably thought of themselves as having achieved at least a part of that goal during the Bush Junior years, with his Supreme Court appointments and that Court's rulings, and to the extent that Obama thinks like a Democrat (often not very much), having accomplished even more of that goal by stymieing almost all of that president's attempts at legislation since 2010 when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives. The GOPers held two of the four overtly established power centers of our government (we won't talk in this post about the undeclared power centers such as the No Such Agency and its ilk)... the House and the Supreme Court... and Democrats held two... the presidency (hence the entire Executive branch) and the Senate. Republicans were sitting pretty, for a party that had lost the presidency and the Senate.

This year, the GOP seems to have made its move: they decided to "eat once and for all." Their deciding to do that displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the diverse, multifaceted nature of the American body politic in its beliefs and voting habits: eating once and for all can have only one possible outcome, even if it's not clear yet just how or when that outcome manifests itself.

But I, having cleaned up after New Year's Eve parties in which people tried to "drink once and for all," really regret the necessity of whatever comes next. Like the post-drunken ralph and the post-party cleanup, the question is not "whether" but "when" and "how catastrophically." The outcome (upchuck?) will surely be bad for everyone concerned— Republicans, Democrats, people who think they're independent, and people who think they don't give a damn— all will have an absolute helluva mess to clean up. Welcome, Americans, willy-nilly, to the sorry world you now live in, thanks to Republican gluttony.

Charles Pierce Nails It: 'The Reign Of Morons Is Here'

Charles P. Pierce at Esquire's Politics Blog describes the whole phenomenon of

the shutdown so perfectly that I can only wish I wrote as well as he does. No samples. No excerpts. Go read the whole thing.

(In this Esquire pic, Pierce looks just like an old friend and sometime colleague of mine... except that the old friend is politically on the extreme right, quite beyond redemption the last time I talked with him.)

(H/T Kryten's comment on a thread at Bryan's Why Now?)

Bill Moyers Essay: 'On The Sabotage Of Democracy'

Here.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  After you watch Bill Moyers, you may want to read a related post by Robert Parry at truthout, on the subject, "The White Man's Last Tantrum?" Here's a sample from the beginning:

American pundits are missing the bigger point about the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government and the GOP’s threatened default on America’s credit. The real question is not what policy concessions the Tea Partiers may extract, but rather can a determined right-wing white minority ensure continuation of white supremacy in the United States?

For years, political scientists have been talking about how the demographic changes in the United States are inexorably leading to a Democratic majority, with Hispanics and Asian-Americans joining African-Americans and liberal urban whites to erode the political domains of white conservatives and white racists.

But those predictions have always assumed a consistent commitment to the democratic principle of one person, one vote – and a readiness of Republicans to operate within the traditional standards of democratic governance. But what should now be crystal clear is that those assumptions are faulty.

...

The suggestion is that the battle is changing in both scope and nature, from an intense political battle in the American tradition to nothing less than a takeover attempt by the philosophical descendants of the Old South, trying to restore what they see themselves as having lost after the Civil War. It's scary stuff; don't read it late at night unless you have steady nerves.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Norman Solomon's post "The NSA Deserves a Permanent Shutdown" is also worth your attention. Solomon's approach is different, but the topic is still the survival of representative government and fundamental civil liberties in the United States. That really is what we're contending for, isn't it? Nothing less than that...

Is The 'Grand Bargain' Back?

As DSWright of FDL says, "It’s not too late for Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." From Robert Costa at National Review's The Corner, the rumor is that Obama, despite overwhelmingly negative public reaction to suggested cuts during the last debt limit confrontation, still wants to be known as the president who whacked Social Security and Medicare:

...

“It’s the return of the grand bargain,” says one House Republican, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “There weren’t a lot of specifics discussed, and the meetings were mostly about just checking in. But he’s looking hard at the debt limit as a place where we can do something big.”

...

Per sources, entitlement reforms, such as chained CPI, an elimination of the medical-device tax, and delays to parts of Obamacare are all on the table as trades for delaying aspects of sequestration and extending the debt limit. Camp, especially, is pushing to have a tax-reform framework included.

...

I'd say "just shoot me now," but who knows how much GOPer spin Boehner is putting on this story for the sake of his hard-to-please public.

I'm not hard to please: just don't kill or maim SocSec and Medicare, and I'll at least listen to you.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I came back from lunch and all mention today of a "grand bargain" has vanished from the TPM site, at least if their search is any good. TalkingPointsMemo... we can rewrite the news faster than you can read it.

UPDATE 10/3 about 1:30pm CDT:  Politico has it a bit differently:

When House Speaker John Boehner raised the idea at a White House meeting Wednesday with Obama and congressional leaders, “everybody laughed at him because they’ve heard this song and dance so many times before,” said a Democratic aide briefed on the meeting. A Republican aide disputed the account, saying Democrats harangued Boehner to appoint budget negotiators. The speaker retorted, saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will not allow Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to hold talks with House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Believe whomever you please. I'm tired of this b^llsh!t.

UPDATE 10/3, mid-afternoon time uncertain: Phoenix Woman at FDL assesses from multiple sources that Obama is not caving, and that Republicans are aware he's not. I suppose we'll see.

Sen. Franken Donates Salary During Shutdown

As you know, the XXVII^th Amendment to the Constitution prevents changing the compensation paid US Senators and Representatives until a House election has passed. Thus, as fair as it may seem to deprive members of Congress of their very considerable salaries during the shutdown, that deprivation cannot be done constitutionally.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has offered to donate his salary for the duration of the shutdown to Second Harvest Heartland, a hunger relief organization active in Minnesota. Here's Sen. Franken:

I believe that while the government is shut down, donating my salary to charity is the right thing to do, and I’m going to make sure that money goes toward helping people who might be badly affected by the shutdown.

That seems both fair and kind to me. And that's no joke! It seems such a good idea that I'm going to recommend it to my own US Senators and Representative, all Republicans:

Dear Senators Cornyn and Cruz, and Representative Culberson:

Your salary continues to be paid during the government shutdown. Exactly what are you doing to earn it? Surely you're not just going fishing.

When I was a working man, my income depended on my continuing to work... no work, no income. Yet the 27^th Amendment to the Constitution insulates you and all members of Congress from changes to your compensation for the duration of a term of the House of Representatives.

I noticed that Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is donating his salary for the duration of the government shutdown to a charity that addresses hunger. How about you? Considering your role in the shutdown, do you have the common decency to redirect the taxpayers' money to people who need it, rather than simply putting it in your own already well-stuffed pockets?

Inquiring Texans want to know!

Very truly yours,

Stephen Bates
Houston, TX

Josh Marshall Sums It Up: ‛Desperate, Ugly & Stupid’

Josh Marshall offers a pungent assessment of the shutdown:

Pressed on what House Republicans want to get out the national government shutdown, Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) said yesterday: "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

We've seen this movie before. And I don't mean the 1995/96 shutdown or the impeachment sequel three years later. This is more like that 70s era made for TV movie.

...

Unlike Marshall himself, I lived through that era. The Seventies were "nasty, brutish, and" not nearly short enough... what good can come of a decade beginning with Richard Nixon as president. So far, that's also a good description of the shutdown, lacking only Nixon.

Oh, and as for Rep. Stutzman's claim... sorry, dude, but you're already disrespected... around the world.

Another Option For Obama: Ignore Debt Ceiling As Being Unconstitutional

Barkley Rosser of EconoSpeak, citing Henry Aaron (not the baseball great, but rather the economist at Brookings Institution), proposes that President Obama simply ignore the debt ceiling because it conflicts with the president's 14^th Amendment duty to pay the nation's debts.

From the US Constitution, 14^th Amendment, part 4:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, ... shall not be questioned. ...

Particularly in the case of the ACA, the passage "authorized by law" is significant. The ACA is, in fact, law: it was passed by both houses of Congress, signed by the president, and even vetted by the Supreme Court when it was challenged.

This paragraph in Rosser's post is also straight to the point:

[Henry] Aaron notes that there was a discussion of this conundrum in 2012 in the Columbia Law Review by Neil H. Buchanan and Michael C. Dorf who concluded that indeed there are only three options in this case: 1) do not pay lawful bills, 2) arbitrarily raise taxes, and 3) simply ignore the debt ceiling and proceed as usual. After noting that these are all bad option and technically illegal, with Aaron adding "unconstitutional because violating the law," they conclude that #3 is the least bad of the bad options. Aaron notes that Obama doing this may well lead to him being impeached by the House, but he would not be convicted by the Senate, and it would avoid multiple disasters to the world economy. Aaron also notes that getting rid of the debt ceiling will end the periodic attempts at blackmail by opposition parties trying to achieve ends they could not get through normal legislative processes. All of this is correct, needless to say.

If this is the "least bad" option among bad options, why have I not heard it mentioned elsewhere? Actually, I've heard one vague reference to the president's using the 14^th Amendment requirement, but this is the most detail I have seen.

Legal experts out there... comments? Please consider that you have an audience comprising mostly non-lawyers, including me, who nonetheless read carefully and care about the result.

'Elect Republicans, And...' Rachel Maddow Will Tell You What Happens Next

... "they will burn the place down." None of this is new, says Rachel Maddow: Republicans have been promising for 2-3 years that if they are elected, the way they will govern is that they will shut down the government, and then... and then... well, there didn't seem to be a Republican consensus about governance, only about shutting down the government. Maddow's report was aired about two hours before the shutdown began, but there is considerable insight in her segment. I wish I could say that about anything Republicans have done or said since the shutdown began.