Seventeen thoughts on the government shutdown
Democrats can’t back an appropriations deal that Trump can claw back with a party-line vote.
It takes 60 votes to pass appropriations legislation, but only 50 votes to pass a rescission package clawing appropriations back. Rescission authority has rarely been used in practice, because passing rescissions on a party-line vote blows up the logic of bipartisan appropriations. But Republicans have, for the first time ever, done party-line rescissions, and the administration has further pushed the procedural envelope with unprecedented pocket rescissions. Trump is now asking Democrats to provide cross-party votes for appropriations that they can unilaterally backtrack on and not even offering verbal promises to refrain from doing this. This is why the government is shutting down.
The high socioeconomic status liberals who dominate the Democratic Party are most fired up not about the logic of congressional appropriations, though, but about (as Ezra Klein wrote on September 7) the fact that “We’ve watched Trump deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles and then to Washington, with more cities expected to come under federal military occupation soon. We’ve watched masked ICE agents conducting raids all over the country, refusing to reveal badge numbers or warrants.”
Even though Trump’s numbers on crime and immigration have declined, and most voters think he’s gone too far, these remain his two best issues, and ones where the G.O.P. retains a daunting trust advantage vis-à-vis Democrats.
Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are trying to channel the rage of (2) in a way that is mindful of the politics of (3) by turning this into a fight about health care funding, which is Democrats’ area of strongest issue trust.
The problem with (4) is that everyone knows that refusing to vote for a continuing resolution unless you win an unrelated policy demand never works. The upside to (4) is that, whether or not it works, Democrats get multiple news cycles about the expiring Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. The Democratic position on this is very popular, but the issue had received almost no news coverage until the shutdown grew near. If Democrats don’t get what they’re asking for on this, they’re at least dramatizing the ask, and when premiums soar next year, they’ll have already set up the argument that it’s Trump’s fault.
Brian Beutler changed my mind over the course of two episodes of Politix. He argued that the best fight to pick is the real fight — that Democrats cannot provide votes for appropriations that are going to be clawed back. This is emotionally unsatisfying among thought-leaders and too boring for swing voters to care about. But it is an argument that is logical and correct and persuasive on the merits, that a person could defend in an extensive back-and-forth or in a hostile interview. We can’t do a deal if the president is saying he’ll break the deal. We’ve all seen what Darth Vader did to Lando Calrissian.
The logical endgame of Democrats picking a logical fight is that Republicans nuke the filibuster and start appropriating with 50 votes.
I think that’s a totally fine outcome; appropriations should be done with 50 votes. The way to stop the majority party from doing bad appropriations should be to beat them in an election. The filibuster obscures lines of accountability and gets us stuck in bizarre conversations about congressional procedure rather than competing visions for the country. However, to the extent that people want Democrats to use “leverage” and “stand up to Trump,” it’s a reminder that there is very little actual leverage here. If Trump and Thune and Johnson believed that a government shutdown was a big problem, they would have nuked the filibuster already. The shutdown is happening because Republicans believe they will not feel pain from this. If they’re proved wrong and do feel pain, they have the nuclear option at their disposal. There is no scenario here where Democrats humiliate Trump and bring him to heel, even though the base desperately wants that.
Two frontline House members told me they think a shutdown will be bad for their re-election, but they’re not worried because they’re sure the Senate will cave fast, so they’ll just do what their base wants and vote against continuing resolutions.
Chuck Schumer averted a shutdown in March, believing that the political situation would improve for Democrats a few months down the road. I thought he did the right thing at the time, and I think he’s been vindicated by events. But none of the people who raked him over the coals have said they changed their mind or that Schumer did the right thing. I’m very frustrated with Schumer’s overall weak leadership, but I have to concede that the one time he did take a strong leadership position, he took a lot of shit for it and, even though he was right, nobody came around to his viewpoint.
Several smart moderate members who want to see the Democratic Party change have told me that “we” (meaning people who broadly agree with Slow Boring takes) need to be in favor of the shutdown, because if we come out in favor of surrender, we’ll be discredited in the eyes of the fighting-minded base. Democratic Party primary voters are pretty pragmatic and electability-minded, but they really do want to beat Trump, and if moderation becomes surrender-coded, the left will eat our lunch in interfactional battles.
All the left’s champions are in safe seats, so they have the luxury of not caring about short-term politics.
Before Republicans offered a seven-week C.R., several Democrats told me that if they could get a short-term C.R. to kick the can past the New Jersey and Virginia elections, that would be ideal. But for obvious reasons, they said, the G.O.P. would never agree to that, so they expected a shutdown on October 1.
The extent to which everything is being driven by interfactional positioning can be seen in the fact that when Republicans unexpectedly did offer to kick the can into November, Democrats who previously thought that would be incredibly good luck on their part all said no. The decision had been made that it was time to take a stand — like Captain Picard resolving “the line must be drawn here!” — with no real strategic thought about October 1 versus November 12. To be the guy who doesn’t want to do the shutdown is to be a traitor, and nobody wants to be a traitor.
I fundamentally don’t think this matters that much to the big picture politics of the United States of America. We’ve seen plenty of shutdown gambits fail, and then the party that “loses” bounces back fast and does great in the midterms. Conversely, if Democrats win and get what they are asking for on health care or rescissions or both, it won’t even remotely address their actual anxiety about Trump’s corrupt and authoritarian behavior.
The only thing that actually matters is the midterms, especially the Senate, and what matters there are big strategic questions of national politics, not tactical positioning around appropriations.
It genuinely does not make sense to ask for 60 votes for an appropriation that you can claw back with just 50. There are so many profound issues being fought over in American politics right now, but the proximate cause of the shutdown is a dumb and illogical aspect of congressional procedure.
> This is emotionally unsatisfying among thought-leaders and too boring for swing voters to care about.
I actually think Democrats currently occupy the winning side of this for people who are bored by congressional procedure.
A very simple message is: "Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress, if they want to fund the government, they can do that, they don't need us."
It's the counterargument to that that requires explaining arcane congressional procedure. Let Republicans try to explain it, while everyone's eyes glaze over.
This is hugely bolstered by everything that has happened in the Trump admin so far. Do people really believe that if they can raise an army of masked thugs to hassle hispanic people everywhere in the country, they can't pass a status quo funding bill? Their whole thing is that you can just do things, and now they can't pass a simple bill? It doesn't pass the smell test. It won't help when they try to explain why, seemingly in only two cases - keeping the government open and releasing the Epstein files - they're totally helpless, whereas in every other case they can just do whatever they want.
Make them explain this!
The boring, object-level point is correct: Democrats have no reason to vote for a compromise that Trump can unilaterally break in his favor. All the factional gamesmanship and political history just confuses this point, I think, and I appreciate Matt saying he changed his mind here.