No shutdown this time
A shutdown won’t be happening after all. For the last few days, most everyone seemed to think it was inevitable. The whole charade was mindboggling in its pointlessness and stupidity. It’s not the first time a shutdown has been a possibility nor would it have been the first time a shutdown happened. It was the first time a shutdown was being threatened over absolutely nothing.
It’s easy to blame the roughly 20 or so Republican House members who were pushing for a shutdown, most notably Matt Gaetz. They deserve plenty of blame, but let’s not give them too much credit. Their having any leverage at all stems from Kevin McCarthy cutting a deal with them in exchange for their voting for him to be Speaker in January. The last few days were not just predictable, they were all but preordained.
In the end, the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) yesterday afternoon, which the Senate passed later in the evening and Biden quickly signed. It keeps the government running until November 17. From a policy standpoint, it was a complete loss for the most right-wing Republican House members (the hardliners). They were pushing for substantial cuts to non-discretionary domestic spending, but wound up getting nothing.
The only win the hardliners got was cutting out aid for Ukraine from the CR. Luckily, there is still bipartisan support for it, which will likely be approved separately in short order. No money for border security was included either. Overall spending levels will remain the same as they are now.
The CR in the House was passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support. All but one Democrat voted for it and most Republicans voted for it, too. However, it got far more votes from Democrats than Republicans. As has frequently been the case since 2010, House Republicans needed Democrats to pass something of any significance. In the Senate, the CR passed with unanimous support from Democrats and all but nine Republicans.
As for McCarthy, the hardliners in his party would love to oust him as Speaker, but I doubt that will happen. They could try to do it, but likely wouldn’t have the votes and there is nobody so far presenting themselves as an alternative. All that is okay for Matt Gaetz and his ilk. They may seem like the losers from this, but are not.
For them, putting on a show is the goal. Fomenting chaos with no end game is a feature, not a bug. They never will get the spending cuts they claim to want and that is fine with them. When they don’t get what they want they just say the party leadership betrayed them. Lauren Boebert aside, all of them come from solidly red districts and so never have to worry about not getting reelected.
Some familiar patterns
There are so many ways in which contemporary Democrats in Congress differ from Republicans that you would need a ten million page book to explain it all. The last few days illustrate how different the two parties are better than almost anything else. Ever since Republicans took back the House in 1994, they have been an unruly group. Beginning in 1995 with Newt Gingrich, there was a three week shutdown that wound up benefitting Clinton and marked a turning point in his effort to win reelection.
Since 2010, House Republicans have been completely incapable of governing. Even when they controlled the House from 2011-2019, they needed Democrats to help them avoid and end shutdowns, to avoid defaults and to pass legislation deemed absolutely essential, i.e., aid for Hurricane Sandy and renewing the Violence Against Women Act. It was obvious last year when it became clear how narrow their House majority would be that they would run into those same problems.
During the eight years Republicans held the House, there were two shutdowns.[i] The first was in 2013, which lasted for two weeks. Its ostensible goal was to defund the Affordable Care Act, which was set to be implemented in October of that year. It didn’t defund it and wound up distracting from its initial website failure. The second shutdown was at the end of 2018, which lasted over a month. It was instigated by Trump ostensibly over border wall money. In the end, the government was reopened and no border wall money was approved.
Had there been a shutdown this time around, the same outcome would have happened. There has never been a shutdown that resulted in the instigating party getting what it wanted. If we have a shutdown in November the same will be true. It will be all the more true because it’s not clear what the hardliners even want on policy.
Looking at the three shutdowns and the events of the last few days, some consistencies are noticeable. The first is that shutdowns happen when Republicans control the House. Hardliners exist in the Senate, but they are much more numerous in the House. Because the hardliners have been numerous enough to make or break a majority, they have leverage from it. Since Republicans right now can only afford to lose four votes when trying to pass anything on a party-line vote, that makes the hardliners even stronger.
That reality is what forced McCarthy to acquiesce to virtually all of their demands in return for their votes to make him Speaker. In getting the Speaker gavel, he all but put himself at their mercy. In the deal he cut with Biden on the debt ceiling, the hardliners were mad at him for agreeing to what was a normal spending deal without any large spending cuts. To appease them, he went back on the spending level agreed to and pushed for a lower level.
The lower level McCarthy started pushing for was never going to pass the Senate and was meant as an opening bid. The idea was that Republicans would pass a bill on a party-line vote and then negotiate with the Senate on it. If the majority was functional it would have been able to do that, but that’s the last word to describe House Republicans. The hardliners still opposed the lower spending level claiming it wasn’t enough. Because of that, Republicans were unable to pass anything on a party-line vote, which made their leverage in negotiations with the Senate zero.
Their inability to pass anything on their own meant they needed Democrats to rescue them. Since they needed Democrats’ help, that meant they would have to give up any spending reductions. That’s the funny part in all this. By refusing to accept even harsh spending cuts, the hardliners wound up making what was passed much more left-wing. But that’s okay with them because they exist to entertain and complain about being betrayed.
In 2013, although the shutdown was caused by House Republicans, it was instigated by Ted Cruz. The whole thing was ludicrous from the start. The idea that Obama would have signed legislation repealing or defunding his signature achievement under any circumstances was patently absurd. Cruz was certainly aware of that, he just wanted to get attention. The Affordable Care Act wasn’t defunded or repealed, but Cruz succeeded in making himself a household name.
In 2018, Trump not only instigated a shutdown, he boasted about it. He proudly declared that he would take credit for it. It was the longest shutdown in US history, but, like the previous two shutdowns, accomplished nothing, which leads us to the second consistency.
Shutdowns don’t ever accomplish anything of substance for those pushing for them. For those interested in pushing for a change in policy, shutting down the government is a guaranteed way to not accomplish it. It’s not a legitimate tactic and is guaranteed to get very negative press coverage. Those who push for it always come off looking bad.
It’s a good thing that shutting down the government doesn’t get policy changes enacted. Having routine shutdowns is not something a well-functioning party that cares about governing does. If people were rewarded for doing that, the incentives would be awful. Shutdowns would become a routine thing and could last for months. There would be no reason not to do it.
While the economic toll from shutdowns has been very limited, if they became routine and lasted for months that would likely change. The US would increasingly be seen as a dysfunctional place. If that were to happen, borrowing for the US government might become more expensive, which would cause all kinds of problems. Other countries might begin to see the US as unreliable and untrustworthy and look to do business elsewhere.
The third consistency is that those who instigate shutdowns get blamed for it. There are a lot of injustices in politics, but that luckily is not one of them. Some seem to think that it’s always Republicans who get blamed for shutdowns, but that’s not quite right. It’s those who instigate shutdowns who get blamed, which has happened to be Republicans almost every time a shutdown has happened or has been a possibility.
The reason why shutdowns happen when Republicans control the House stems from what I have written about them before. They have no interest in governing. Many of their members believe in ideas that are extremely unpopular and will never get enacted under the most favorable circumstances. Others like Matt Gaetz and his ilk believe in entertainment and putting on a show.
If you’re someone who believes in providing entertainment and doesn’t care about governing, you don’t mind screwing over your own party. If what winds up getting passed is way more left-wing than what was going to happen absent your tactics, that’s all the better. You can just tell your primary voters and media allies back home and nationally that you were betrayed by your party’s leadership. In their eyes, you can never fail, you can only be failed.
Since a large majority of congressional Republicans believe in unpopular ideas that few people like and/or care about entertainment above all else, regular showdowns are all but guaranteed to happen. Caring about entertainment and not about governing means you have nothing to lose so there is no downside to careening from one pointless fight to another. No matter what happens, you are guaranteed to entertain your audience and get attention. Best of all, since you don’t care about policy, no matter what gets passed in the end, you can never lose.
How Republicans have handled power since the Gingrich years is in sharp contrast to how Democrats have handled things when controlling the House. Democrats had the House from 2007-2011 and 2019-2023. How many shutdowns happened on their watch? If you guessed zero, you’re right. Democrats care about governing and getting things done. They did plenty of it during both of those four year periods and will do it again the next time they control the House.[ii]
Democrats had the same narrow majority from 2021-2023 that Republicans have now. Despite that, they enacted a boatload of legislation, most of which had bipartisan support. How much legislation have House Republicans passed this year? Almost nothing save for a few messaging bills, with the only thing of any significance, the debt ceiling deal, having more support from Democrats than Republicans.
Because Democrats care about governing, their incentive for party discipline is much stronger. That is why they had no trouble electing a Speaker in 2021, unlike Republicans earlier this year. They also have incentives to be pragmatic and to not adhere to hardline demands. Even the most left-wing Democrats voted for the Inflation Reduction Act and the Affordable Care Act. While the most right-wing Republicans will go for all-or-nothing, the most left-wing Democrats will take half a loaf or less every time.
The fourth consistency is the increasing procedural radicalism of the Republican Party. This predates Trump, but has gotten much worse since he showed up. It is now virtually guaranteed that when Republicans control the House there will be fights over the debt ceiling and/or keeping the government open. When Republicans control the House and the president is a Democrat, the odds of those fights happening are basically 100%. One shutdown or near shutdown can be chalked up to many different things. Three shutdowns and just as many near shutdowns, in addition to debt ceiling fights, is a pattern.[iii]
It’s not just on those things where Republicans have become radicalized. A large majority of House Republicans voted against certifying the 2020 election results. They did that despite the Capitol being attacked the day before. In the future, voting against certifying election results may be the new normal for Republicans. It will (god willing) not change the outcome, but it will give credence to conspiracy theories about elections being stolen, just as their votes two years ago have done.
Why don’t House Democrats push for shutdowns? Because almost all of them are smart enough to know that it wouldn’t work. When your goal is to pass legislation, you tend to avoid doing things that obviously will undermine your chances of success. Most are also aware that it’s a bad look to shut down the government when you’re supposed to be the party that cares about governing and believes the government can be a force for good.
You might think House Republicans would learn from getting blamed for shutdowns when they instigate them, but you would be wrong. That’s not just because they don’t care about governing. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to pay a political price for it as long as it doesn’t cause serious disruption or economic damage. In a more just world, any party that instigated a shutdown would be voted out the next election cycle automatically, but that’s not this world. That brings us to the fifth consistency, which is that the political effects of shutdowns on those who instigate them have tended to be small or non-existent.
The most politically significant shutdown was in 1995. Clinton had been struggling since Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and was looking for something to bring him back to life. The three week shutdown helped with it and allowed him to use House Republicans as a foil when running for reelection. However, he had many others things going in his favor that likely played a much bigger role in his getting reelected. Namely, the economy was in a good place by November 1996 and Bob Dole was a weak challenger.
The shutdown in 2013 didn’t matter one bit the next year. Republicans kept the House and won back the Senate in a rout. The same is true for the 2018-2019 shutdown. By November 2020, it was long forgotten. Of all the things on peoples’ minds, that didn’t make the top trillion. Whatever effects on peoples’ lives those two shutdowns had was long gone by the time voting was happening.
In a way that’s a good thing. I’m glad the economy doesn’t fall into a recession whenever a shutdown happens or almost happens. I’m glad that federal employees are given backpay for the time they missed through no fault of their own. In general, it’s good to have an economy that’s not heavily reliant on governmental activity and avoiding significant damage from governmental dysfunction is one of them.
The only downside to that is the political effects are minimal. Most people aren’t affected by shutdowns in any noticeable way. Many probably don’t even know it’s happening. When the government reopens, all the previous drama is quickly forgotten. Those who instigated the shutdown tend to get away with it, especially those most directly responsible for it as they come from safe red districts.
[i] Technically, there were three. One was in January 2018 that was instigated by Democrats over trying to get the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order from Obama enshrined into law. It was obvious shutting down the government was a dumb move and the shutdown only lasted for a weekend.
[ii] Some things that were enacted when Democrats controlled the House include TARP, ARRA, ACA, Dodd-Frank, CARES Act, ARP, IRA, IIJA and the CHIPS Act.
[iii] It doesn’t help that there is a large right-wing media echo chamber that encourages hardline tactics that can lead to shutdowns. There is no equivalent of that on the left. When Fox encourages brinkmanship tactics, Republicans listen. If MSNBC ever does the same, Democrats won’t care in the slightest.