On Kicking the Can to the Next Crisis

The government is up and running again, and the nation’s debts will be paid for another four months, or at least the better part thereof.  That was the good news that emerged from the eleventh hour capitulation by Congressional Republicans last week.

With the government about to reach the limit of the available indebtedness that could legally be amassed and all but essential services having been shut down for over two weeks, the tea party members of the GOP Congressional membership finally folded their cards and accepted defeat last week.  In the tense game of brinksmanship that President Obama had insisted on playing with the Ted Cruz-wing of the Republican Party, the president emerged victorious.  He had refused to negotiate with Republicans about matters concerning the budget until the government was re-opened and the debt ceiling was increased.

And so it ended as many had assumed it would, with old-line Republicans like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell licking their wounds and promising that that particular strategic ploy (pushing the country to the edge of economic collapse) would never happen again.  For his part, the president sounded much calmer and much less exultant than he must have felt, promising to bargain in good faith, if the Republicans would do the same, in an effort to bring spending under control.

Optimism (or at least the Washington version of it) always reigns when a crisis has been averted.  It takes a few days for the reality of the post-near-crisis situation to make itself clear.  And in this instance, the reality is that nothing has really changed, other than the view the country has of the Republican Party.

Polls show that the public has turned off to the current brand of Republicanism.  And it isn’t as if the GOP hasn’t done its best to put itself in the very unpleasant position it is in today.  Closing the doors of government offices when you’re a politician is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  And threatening your country with economic Armageddon is like chopping off your head to spite your body.  Even the most casual observers look at such antics and wonder what value those using such tactics really have.

Mitch McConnell and, presumably, John Boehner are well aware of what the radicals in their party have wrought.  But whether they can control that gang, especially when they have a champion like Senator Cruz ready and willing to create headlines for them, is another matter entirely.

For now, the leadership has succeeded in kicking the can down the road yet again.  The serious players will again try to achieve some kind of compromise that makes sense to almost everyone.  The details of that compromise aren’t at all clear, but the structure would have to include some entitlement reform (meaning a reduction in benefits in the “out years”) in return for some form of revenue enhancement (most probably in the form of increased tax rates for the wealthiest individuals and a closing of loopholes for the most successful businesses).

Everyone (well, almost everyone: more about that in a moment) can agree with that general picture.  The devil, as they say, will be in the details, or, more importantly, in spelling out the details.  But even if the leaders of their respective caucuses (Representative Paul Ryan for the Republicans and Senator Patty Murray for the Democrats) can reach a deal (hardly a certainty), any such deal would have to be approved by the rest of the elected Congresspersons and Senators, and many of them will have constituents who are not easily assuaged.

The structural problem in Congress flows from the gerrymandering that has taken place in the last two redistricting cycles (following the 2000 and 2010 national censuses).  The newly configured districts are, in many instances, drawn to create “safe” seats for both parties.  Thus, Republicans and Democrats in the vast majority of Congressional districts are elected (and re-elected) by highly partisan—and radical—constituencies.  They are, in other words, free of concerns about the centrist positions party leaders might want to push.  They answer only to their own voters, most of whom are more than happy to have them champion more radical causes.

The tea party owes its existence to this reality.  Extreme right-wing members of Congress are free to be as radical in the positions they espouse as they like, because those positions are representative of the vast majority of the voters in their districts.  The same is true of those on the far left (such as it is in today’s America).  They are equally unwilling to bend to the center on matters of what they regard as “principle.”

The end result is a Congress that is dysfunctional and that borders on being completely ineffectual.  Now add to the mix a president who is, well, less than a great negotiator, to be completely candid.  Obama, in his four and a half years in office, has shown little ability or willingness to engage in the hard work of negotiating.  His major legislative achievement to date, the Affordable Care Act, was enacted largely due to the efforts of Nancy Pelosi, who reined in her Democratic caucus when it held the majority in the House, and Harry Reid, who kept his caucus under control in the Senate.  Obama left it to them, and their lieutenants, to do the heavy lifting.

In the months leading up to the most recent nonsense, Obama flat out refused to negotiate, which, while it was actually a good political position to strike (leaving the Republicans to suffer the predictable fate of their foolish gambit), certainly didn’t burnish his reputation as a negotiator.

This most recent crisis was averted because McConnell and Boehner got enough of their colleagues to agree that a deal to “kick the can down the road” was better than the thrashing the party would have taken had the government shutdown continued with a default thrown in for good measure.

The likelihood is that they will have to face the same music again in three or four months, and a good bet would be that the can will again be kicked.