We have had in the past week the grotty specter of Dick Morris threatening us with another government shutdown (Dick Morris - We'll win this time), "just like in 1995 and 96, only this time we'll win." TPM has been following this story, and has a discussion of how a shutdown would work (The 'Un-American' Results If Republicans Really Force A Government Shutdown).
As informative and interesting as the article is, it seems beside the point in one key aspect. Of course the next House, if it is going to be Republican, will not do the same thing the same way, because it turned out so badly for them last time, back in 1995 and 96.
The Fundamentals
What a Republican House might try to do would be to get its unilateral way by using the power of the purse, and not funding specific federal programs and personnel it would rather see go away. But they would do everything possible to avoid a general or widespread shutdown on the way to that goal. The shutdown, if there is to be one, would be the Democrats' counter strategy against this assertion of the power of the purse. The Republicans' aim, in this sceanrio, would be to avoid that Dem weapon, to make it so that the Dems either can't use it, or that if they do use it, it will be ineffective, and they will have to back down and let the Republicans have their unilateral way on cutting government programs and personnel.
Now, this assertion of a unilateral power of the purse would be a distinct innovation, it would not be the conventional way that the two chambers of our Congress and the president get things done. Conventionally, if you want an existing program to go away, you pass a new statute that does away with the program. To become law, that bill would need the assent of the other chamber and the president, or veto-proof majorities in both chambers. But the Republicans, in 2011, if they control the House, will not have all these elements, they will only (presumably) control one chamber, by a bare majority, and not the presidency or the Senate at all.
The Last Time this was Tried
Trying to get what they are not "due" conventionally, the power to kill programs with only the bare majority of the House, will require constitutional hardball. It will require them to win the game of legislative chicken with the Democrats, who will predictably resist by insisting that the budget be done the conventional way. The Democrats won that confrontation last time, in 1995 and 96. The Republicans were forced to back down by the Democrats' refusal to approve budget bills that the Republicans had sliced programs from, even though they had to let the government shut down because nothing was funded. Presumably the Dems won in the court of public opinion because most people thought the Republicans were overreaching, trying to get more than their "due" from just winning the House in 1994.
That result, the Republicans getting spanked for their pains in 1995, has made people on our side complacent about a possible repeat in 2011. Bring it, this thinking goes, a shut down is just what the doctor ordered to insure that Obama wins as big in 2012 as Clinton did in 1996.
How They Will Do it Differently This Time
If they're going to try this again, they won't make the same mistake they did last time, and pass funding bills according to the budget prepared by the administration. Where they have time, they will reformulate the administration's suggested line items, and craft line items that better conform to what they want and don't want to fund. But in any case, they will separate the line items, of their own crafting or the administration's, that fund core govt services, from the those that fund programs and personnel that they would not mind sending to the showers.
The rationale they will offer for this procedural innovation will be this great budget crisis we are in, the supposedly emergent need to trim govt spending at all costs, and right now. Dick Morris advances this as the rationale for this action, as much as he mischaracterizes the place of the shutdown in the overall scheme.
Precisely to avoid the possibility of a messy shut-down of the govt that might result from the great battle over cuts that they will wage against the defenders of "wasteful" govt spending, the Democrats, the Republicans will send up funding bills from the House that fund only the core functions, only things that no one wants to see shut down. The controversial items will be promised to follow in a separate raft of funding bills, a separation designed to let the political struggle over these "controversial" items take place in a way that doesn't put core, consensus, govt operations at risk of disruption.
Of course the Dems will suspect, rightly, that the House will never let any of the "controversial" line items that they don't like ever see the light of day, once the core funding is safely passed. They will be tempted to refuse to pass the core funding bills, to shut down the govt if it comes to that, as their only leverage for ever getting funding for the controversial stuff out of the House.
The Crisis
Now, if there is a set of alternate funding bills ready to go, presumably because the Senate passed such, then there might be little or no obvious asymmetry between the two parties' positions. This alternate, Senate, version of the funding bills, would be more along the usual lines, in that it won't separate core and controverisal, but just fund everything in one package. Both side would have their sets of funding bills lined up ready for the other chamber to approve, threatening an impasse if they don't get their way.
Now, perhaps the president's support for the Senate's version would make that, in many people's minds, the more natural for the other side to give in to. Perhaps the Republican House would be percieved as the aggressor as in 1995, and things would end up going as they did then, not good for the Rs, as they would be blamed.
But this time, the Rs would have a package that is structurally not the same as the Ds' package, and structurally different in a way that would make them seem not to be the aggressor. Their package would seem, at first sight, to be structured for compromise, to avoid the game of legislative chicken that the Ds are threatening with their threat of a shut down. What would be a more reasonable way out of an impasse in which the two parties disagree over some funding items, than that they should pass the core, consensus budget items they both agree on first, get them out of the way, get them out of the line of fire? They can then have their partisan disagreement over the remaining, controversial, line items.
But it probably won't even be that difficult. Unless the Senate has 60 Ds, it is unlikely to have spending bills ready as an alternative to whatever atrocity the House has sent up. It will be the House's way or the highway.
The Distorted Memory of the Last Shutdown
Sure, the Senate and the president could still try to hang tough, and shut down the govt until and unless they get the House to send up acceptably complete funding bills. But would they be able to hang on longer than the Rs, if the Rs do it this smarter way, splitting the funding in order to offer to take the weapon of govt shutdown off the table? Won't most people in the middle find that disarmament attractively, however deceptively, moderate?
What has happened is that the distorted memory of the last shutdown gives the Republicans an opening they could exploit to make shutdown disarmament seem the moderate, reasonable position. We remember, wrongly, that the new Republican House majority, flush from their victory in 1994, overplayed their hand by trying the dastardly, underhanded trick of a government shutdown to get their unilateral way. The Republican overreach was actually the assertion of a unilateral power of the purse. The shutdown was the Democratic defensive tactic. The only way they could block the House assertion of unilateral budget control was to play chicken with them, and let the government shut down to create a crisis that would focus the public attention on the partisan conflict. As a result, the public came down on our side, but it was as a result of our side shutting down the government.
Yet these events of 1995 are remembered as a Republican shutdown of the government. It failed. Shutdowns are therefore manifestly evil and hyper-partisan, only used by the side seeking to overreach. A clever Republican effort to assert a unilateral, House, power of the purse, will disarm the Dems by structuring the spending bills in such a way that our side will not be able to use a shutdown successfully, as it did in 1995. They will send up the "core" funding first, in an explicit effort to get that evil shutdown tactic off the table. They will, of course, be lauded for bipartisanship by the usual centrists in the media.
Would They Really Do This?
It goes without saying that there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. The non-system of US governance is a highly complex, chaotic even, system. Our politicians are cautious, often to a fault, as a result. So, sure, any such scenario as this, that envisions politicians trying something as inherently fraught and unpredictable as how the people and the other political players will react to constitutional hardball, is not going to be advanced by any sensible person as anything but a possibility, something they might try, but whose chance of actual occurrence no sensible person would try to put a percentage on.
On the other hand, a much less woozy, much more conventional, set of Republicans than the teabaggers tried it in 1995. Sure, you could cite factors making them more cautious this time. The fact that it didn't work at all well in 1995 is one of the chief such factors cited. But I think that the prospect of doing it more artfully this time, the prospect Dick Morris holds out of winning this time, will disarm that factor of fear of a repeat failure.
And I think it worthwhile to stand that objection from the failure of 1995 on its head. Less fruity Republican leadership than the baggers tried consitutional hardball in 1995, despite what should have been its utterly predictable dismal prospects, because they had no choice but at least try something radical and revolutionary. They had their Contract With America that promised a Second American Revolution, not politics as usual. They won big in 1994 based on that promise of radical change, and could not afford to deflate their revolution by failing to deliver way bigger change than bare control of just the House could possibly give them unless they played for more than their conventional "due", unless they played hardball and won. No matter what the unlikelihood of anything but losing at that hardball, not even trying was the only thing that could expose them for the frauds they and their revolution actually were.
The teabaggers, and the Republican Party that is doubling down on baggerism, seem to me to be subject to that same dynamic, only even more strongly. Their claims about the state of the nation are far more dire and stark than those of the Contract With America con men. We are promised apocalypse if they are not allowed into power now, just in the nick of time to rescue a nation teetering on the brink of destruction. However much their coming victory in taking over the House (if that is indeed what happens) will actually be due to the rotten economy, they will be incapable of attributing it to anything but their promises to lead a revolution. No way will they be able to settle for just their due, only what conventional politics as usual would normally allow them to get as a result of controlling only a bare majority of the House, while Dems hold the Senate and White House. They will have to have drama, big, operatic drama, whatever the outcome, however many bodies litter the stage when the final curtain comes down, just to stay alive as a political movement. Gingrich is back in play just now precisely because he senses that his party is primed for another go at revolutionary change.
The Consequences
If they do this, and if it works for them, and they get their unilateral way on cutting the budget as they alone see fit -- what next? You know, the strongest factor that would keep them from this gambit, if only they had the ability to think this far ahead, would be precisely that they will not know what to do with this great power they seize, that will not quickly blow up in their faces.
Yes, they will be able to cut what they want. They will slake their thirst for ideological revenge by gutting hated programs, and de-funding hated admninistration officials and civil servants, with abandon. But they really won't want to cut the things they would have to cut to make any difference at all in the deficit. They're not cutting the military, at all, and they're not cutting entitlements, certainly not near enough out to make an immediate diference.
Cutting the deficit will have been their rationale, the excuse they offered for why they needed to be granted this unilateral power to cut spending. But once given that power, there will be no way that they can use it for that purpose to such an extent that taxpayers notice a lightened burden. They won't easily, without further and continuing revolution be able to use this power for any purpose beyond their petty little ideological vendettas, which will certainly not satisfy a public that they promised a spending revolution as the reward for enduring a season of constitutional hardball.
And it will, of course, be a long and messy season of hardball. Getting rid of programs and personnel just by negelcting to fund, and not by passing a law that abolishes the the programs and positions, will raise all sorts of legal problems, and provoke a reaction from the administration as it scrambles to find alternate means to fund govt obligations that will still be on the books, even if the money isn't there from the usual source. Shades of Nixon and impoundment! This assertion of the power of the purse would, if successful, not thereby settle any conflicts at all, it would just create a firestorm of new ones. This is the sort of conflict that got the English into their Civil War. It could easily lead to our own second go at that activity.
A House that created such a storm would not be able to stop at just cutting this little ideologically offensive program here and there. They would need big, operatic, results to justify the disturbance they were making. Either big budget results, and they would actually go after the entitlements, or they go for something really out there like using our military might to dun tribute from other countries -- or big distractions to change the subject, like more wars.
A House that succeeded at this constitutional hardball of asserting a unilateral power of the purse would have a hard time stopping at just that hardball. The revolution would have to go on until it burned itself out, and lot of us with it.
Just in case you didn't already have enough motivation to go out and work to keep the House Democratic...