The View from Right Field

Separated at Birth? Ted Cruz and Tom Ricketts

A scary thought, but here are the pictures:

Shutdown Winners and Losers

The common wisdom on the government shutdown is that the Republicans lost and President Obama won.  I don’t disagree with the former.  The Republican loss was just about assured when they said their goal was to defund Obamacare.  That wasn’t going to happen, so they were going to look like they lost.

But did the Democrats really win?  I know the mainstream media said they did, but the media was going to say that almost no matter what.  In looking through some old Wall Street Journals, however, I found this article by Gerald Seib on October 8: “Democrats’ Goal: ‘Break the Fever’ Of Constant Crises.”*

“Breaking the fever is code for ending the cycle of recurring, last-minute crises over spending bills and increases in the nation's borrowing limit—the debt ceiling.  The White House believes these crises give outsize power to a minority of conservative House Republicans who don't have the strength to push their agenda into law but can, in a crisis, stop the action.

More important, Democrats are convinced they must break the cycle now, or see much of the Obama second-term agenda sink away.

‘The only way for us to go forward is to all make clear that the era of threatening default is over,’ Gene Sperling, head of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday at a breakfast organized by Politico.”

That didn’t happen.  The budget was only put off until January 15 and the debt ceiling until February (maybe March).  Not only that, but the sequester is still in place, with another installment coming January 1, and taxes did not go up.  That sounds more like something Republicans wanted than the Democrats.

As for getting Congress to move on to other things, such as immigration, the farm bill and corporate tax loopholes, like the President mentioned in his post-shutdown press conference, it is hard to see that happening.  Certainly, the President didn’t help himself when he trash talked the Republicans in his press conference: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position.  Go out there and win an election.”  That’s not the way to get the other side to work with you.**

So, the Republicans clearly lost, but it doesn’t look to me like the President got what he wanted either.
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* This was the title in the print version.  The online title was different, as you can see.

** If the President wants to see how to reconcile with the other side, now that the national parks have re-opened, he might want to go out to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (it’s only a short detour from Washington), and see how Ulysses S. Grant did it.  I also note that all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are there because they won an election.

Is Ted Cruz a Democratic Mole?

Obviously, he isn’t, but the strategy (I use the word loosely) that he and his followers in Congress* have forced on the Republican Party couldn’t have helped the Democrats more than if it had been planned by the Democratic National Committee.  As Obamacare collapses around the Administration, what is America focusing on?  The inability of the House Republicans to agree on anything with respect to ending the government shutdown or increasing the national debt limit.

Ted Cruz claims he wants to get rid Obamacare.  But instead of letting the disaster that is Obamacare be the lead item on front pages across America, Senator Cruz decided to organize a circular firing squad for Republicans in Congress.

If Republicans lose control the House of Representatives in November of 2014 (something I did not think was possible until very recently), we will have Ted Cruz, et al, to thank for it.

One more thing.  I am getting tired of hearing Republicans in Congress demand that not only should Congressmen and certain of their staffers be forced to buy their health insurance on the new exchanges, but also they should lose the contribution that the federal government is currently making to the cost of that health insurance. 

I don’t know why certain Republicans can’t get it right, but here are the facts:  Before Obamacare kicked in, congressional staffers, like employees of most big companies, and like other federal employees, got their health insurance through work – and their employer paid part of the cost.  Obamacare changed this by requiring some congressional staffers, not all, to get their health insurance through the new exchanges. 

It may be fine to make Congressmen and certain staffers get their health insurance on the exchanges, but why should the federal government no longer pay the same part of the cost of their health insurance that it was paying before?

Should these staffers get a pay cut?  I ask because that is the effect of this position.  If that is what these Republicans want, then they should say it.  Don’t talk about special treatment – because that is phony.  Just say you want to Congressional staffers to get a pay cut.  Because that is what you are doing.
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* I almost said “his Tea Party followers in Congress”, but I didn’t because it would be unfair to most of the people who believe in Tea Party principles.  I do not believe they are as stupid as their followers in Congress. 

The Dumb Wing of the Republican Party

I apologize, a little, for the title of this post, but it is deserved, at least to some extent.  Let me quote from Gerald Seib’s “Capital Journal” in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Republican leaders never planned to battle over whether to fund the government past Oct. 1 and didn't intend to make Obamacare the subject of the fall debate.

Instead, their plan, nurtured all summer long, was to focus on continuing their long campaign to hold down spending, where they have had some success.  And they didn't intend to use as a lever the legislation to keep funding government, but rather the bill needed to raise the country's debt ceiling.

That all changed when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the tea-party movement spent August whipping up grass-roots sentiment to force the GOP to assume as its principal cause the defunding of Obamacare, and to use continued government operations as leverage.  Eventually, House Speaker John Boehner acquiesced.

By picking that fight, the GOP rebels chose to battle over the one issue on which they don't have the votes in Congress to prevail, and on which the Obama administration was least likely to bend.  That threw Republican strategy into a cocked hat, and it has created uncertainty over whether the GOP's principal goal is defunding Obamacare, or delaying it, or attacking deficits and debt.”

I like a lot of what Tea Party supporters stand for.  But what they, and especially their followers in Congress, need to understand is that it is better to win some than to lose all by trying to do too much.

What Ted Cruz, et al, need to understand is that the Republicans aren’t going to defund or delay Obamacare.  But if Obamacare is as bad as we think, and if the roll-out is as problem-filled as it looks like it is, we don’t need to defund it or delay it.  It will crash on its own.  And then, if we can win the Senate next year and the Presidency in 2106, we can put in a good system.

What we need to do now, is to keep spending down as much as we can given that we only control one house of Congress.  And we need to put ourselves in a position that we can win the Senate in 2014 and the Presidency in 2016.  Keeping spending down, i.e., getting something done, will help us do that.  Failing in an attempt to defund Obamacare, etc., i.e., going down to allegedly glorious defeats, won’t.

Solving the Shutdown – Assuming That Is the Goal

Many in the media (how is that for understatement) are blaming Republicans for the shutdown.  That is certainly true in that, if the Republicans had been willing to spend all of the money the Democrats want to, there would have been no shutdown.

In terms of PR, certain Republicans unfortunately forced this to be about more than government spending.  They decided to try to do things, like delaying the individual mandate under Obamacare for a year, that sound great to the die-hards, but look bad to the middle, and that aren’t going to happen.  The President and the Senate Democrats aren’t going to do this.  Demanding it just makes you look foolish.  (Note:  This is not John Boehner’s fault.  I very much doubt he wanted to make these demands, but I don’t think he had a choice.)  Focusing on Obamacare makes you look intransigent.  Focusing on spending would have made the Republicans look responsible.  But the crazy right wasn’t having it.

Still, the fact that some on the right are crazy, doesn’t mean some on the left aren’t looney.  It’s interesting to compare the President’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans on the need to increase the national debt with his excitement over being allowed to have a telephone conversation with the new Iranian president. 

Which gets to the point.  When it comes to the shutdown, if you want to figure out who is the main cause, look at who is benefitting from it.  Clearly, the mainstream media is blaming the Republicans.  Democrats seem to think it is helping them.  After meeting with the President on Monday, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the President should “sit back and watch.”

As it did with the sequester, the Administration seems to trying to make things worse than they need to be.  In 1995 Bill Clinton didn’t shut down the Lincoln Memorial.  Barack Obama did.  It appears the Administration has more people working to keep the World War II memorial closed that it had keeping it open.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that if John Boehner thought he had somebody to negotiate with, he would.  Remember: When President Obama was threatening to attack Syria, both John Boehner and Eric Cantor came out in support of the President right away.  But President Obama seems to think he is better off winning, as opposed to negotiating.  While it is unfair to attribute the thoughts of a blogger to a President, one wonders if the President is thinking along the lines of Andrew Sullivan:

“This time, the elephant must go down.  And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.”

Even If Some House Republicans Are Crazy, the President Has No Clue on How to Work With the Rest of Them

I agree with much of what Charles Cook says in this piece from National Journal: “The GOP’s Reckless Bet.”  Republicans should not let themselves be controlled by that part of the House Republican caucus that refuses to do anything with President Obama.  As others have said, you can’t run the country from one house of Congress.  Neither the Senate nor the President are going to agree to defund Obamacare.  It isn’t going to happen.  And if you shut down the government or refuse to raise the debt limit trying to do it, you’re going to get blamed.

Obamacare is bad, but if Republicans want to replace it with something that works, we first have to keep the House in 2014.  Next, we need to win the Senate in 2014.  Finally, we need to elect a president in 2016.  Once we get all three of these things done, then we can do something about Obamacare. 

However, while I agree with Mr. Cook that House Republicans are taking some big risks in not trying to work out a compromise with Democrats on government funding and the debt limit, Mr. Cook doesn’t give the other side of the story:  It’s really hard to work with somebody who doesn’t respect your beliefs and thinks most of you are basically bad people.

Consider the President’s speech on Syria on September 10.  Near the end of the speech, the President said this (Megan McArdle called it “persuasion-by-insult”):

"And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.

To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough."

Ms. McArdle explained how President Obama’s argument sounded to Republicans:

“Republicans, you may not care about the freedom and dignity of foreigners, or children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor.  But you sure do love war and the military!  We’re going to restore dignity, freedom and life to some foreigners by bombing them – couldn’t you overlook the fact that foreigners will benefit, as long as we get to blow some stuff up?”

And that wasn’t just a one-time thing.  Consider the President’s remarks last Monday on the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis.  First, there was this:

“The problem is at the moment, Republicans in Congress don’t seem to be focused on how to grow the economy and build the middle class.  I say ‘at the moment’ because I’m still hoping that a light bulb goes off here.  (Laughter.)”

Once again, persuasion-by-insult.  Then there was this:

“And as far as the budget goes, it's time for responsible Republicans who share these goals – and there are a number of folks out there who I think are decent folks, I've got some disagreements with them on some issues, but I think [they] genuinely want to see the economy grow and want what's best for the American people – it's time for those Republicans to step up and they've got to decide what they want to prioritize.” 

In other words, there are some Republicans who are “decent” folks, but most of them aren’t.

What Mr. Cook fails to talk about in his article is how hard it has to be for Republican leaders in Congress to get their members to work with a President who thinks that their main goal in foreign policy is to bomb things and who thinks that, while some of them are “decent,” the rest of them, probably the majority of them, aren’t.

Ignoring the Constitution Is Getting to Be an Obama Administration Trend

I have previously talked about President Obama’s willingness to ignore democratic (small “d”) procedures.  (See here, here and here.)  The most recent example is the President’s suspension of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.  Even when he was directly asked, he wouldn’t give the legal basis for his decision to not enforce it; he just isn’t going to do it.*

However, an article in The Washington Post in the middle of August reported on what may be President Obama’s biggest evasion of the Constitution yet: 

“President Obama liked the idea laid out in a memo from his staff: an ambitious plan to expand high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before. Better yet, the president would not need Congress to approve it. …

There’s just one catch: The effort would cost billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees for mobile-phone users. Doing that relies on the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency that has the power to approve or reject the plan.”

There’s actually another catch: the Constitution.  The things I talked about in the posts listed above mostly involved administrative actions.  With respect to cap-and-trade, the Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations even though Congress refused to pass a law to do the same thing.  No Child Left Behind rules were ignored through administrative waivers, instead of getting Congress to change them.  And provisions of the DREAM Act, which Congress wouldn’t pass, are being put in place by prosecutorial discretion.   But this new idea goes further.

With this proposal, the Administration would not only initiate a program without Congressional approval, they would raise the taxes to pay for it without Congressional approval.  (A government fee on your cellphone bill is certainly a tax; I think Chief Justice Roberts would agree.)

Recently, I have been listening to two Teaching Company programs on English history.**  One of the points the lectures emphasized was the role that taxation played in the development of the English Parliament.  The English kings were poor and often needed money, but to raise taxes they needed the approval of Parliament.  To get that approval, the kings would have to make concessions to Parliament.  As the kings continued to ask for money, Parliament increased in power.

We now see our “king,” President Obama, figuring out a way to raise the taxes for his programs without the approval of “parliament,” Congress.  This is not the way our system is supposed to work.  Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a Republican former FCC commissioner, put it this way:

“Using the FCC as a way to get around Congress to spend money that Congress doesn’t have the political will to spend – I think that’s very scary.  Constitutionally, it’s Congress that decides how federal funds should be spent.”

Actually, Mr. Furchgott-Roth understates the issue.  It’s not only Congress who decides how federal money is to be spent.  It is Congress which needs to approve the taxes to raise the money. 

I understand President Obama is frustrated with Congress, but that doesn’t give him the right to ignore the Constitution.  The ends do not justify the means.  When Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, he famously responded, to a woman who asked what kind of government we were to have, a republic or a monarchy, “A republic if you can keep it.”  That still holds true today.  We have a republic – “if we can keep it.”  And keeping the republic means following the Constitution and following the procedures and processes set forth in it – even if we don’t like the results.

President Obama has evaded the Constitution before.  Raising taxes without Congressional approval would be the biggest evasion yet.
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* President Obama did give a basis for his actions; it just wasn’t a legal basis.  The basis he gave was the abnormal political atmosphere in Washington.  Here is what the President said:

“[I]n a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law … let's make a technical change to the law.  That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do.

But we're not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to ‘Obamacare.’”

The only problem with the President’s explanation is that the House of Representatives did pass a bill authorizing the delay of the employer mandate by one year.  The Senate, however, did not consider it, and the President threatened to veto it.  (Here.)  Why?  Perhaps because the House also passed a bill delaying the individual mandate by one year, and maybe Democrats did not like the politics of voting for a delay in the employer mandate while not voting for a similar delay in the individual mandate.

** The two courses were “Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest” and “History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts.”  You can find them at The Teaching Company’s website here.  They are both good.  The second is fantastic.

Shutting Down the Government to Defund Obamacare

I apologize for this comment being a little late, but I went to a lot of Cubs games last week, which got me depressed.  In any case, apparently, members of the non-so-bright wing of the Republican Party are suggesting that Republicans in Congress should shut down the federal government before approving any appropriation bills, or even continuing funding resolutions, that “fund further implementation or enforcement of Obamacare”.  (Here and here.)  Amazing. 

That idea is so dumb it almost makes me think there is some kind of Democratic mole or counteragent who has infiltrated the Republican Party in Washington and is suggesting ideas like this.  Because they will almost certainly guarantee the Democrats win the 2014 election.

The President and the Senate are not going to agree to defund Obamacare.  If Republicans shutdown the federal government on this issue, either later this year or next, the 2014 elections will be just like those in 1998, which was “the first time since 1822 that the party not in control of the White House had failed to gain seats in the mid-term election of a President's second term.”  That was 176 years, but the not-so-bright wing of the Republican Party is trying to do it again.  As I said, amazing.

The bottom line is that I don’t think Obamacare is a good idea, but to do something about it, we have to win elections, not just stage publicity stunts.  It’s what gets done that counts, not just what makes you feel good.

Changing the Filibuster Rule: As Jay Carney Says, Things Are Different Than in 2005. Yep, Obama’s President, Not Bush.

Democrats in the Senate are considering changing the rules on approval of presidential nominations to prohibit filibusters.  It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster in the Senate.  It only takes 51 to approve a nomination.  The idea is that if filibusters are prohibited on nominations, President Obama will get more of his nominees approved.

A couple of thoughts on this.  First, this is what then-Senator Barack Obama said about this idea, which is sometimes called the “nuclear option,” in 2005, when Republicans were thinking of changing Senate rules because the then-Democratic minority was using filibusters to stop some of George W. Bush’s nominees:

“While I have not been here too long, I have noticed that partisan debate is sharp, and dissent is not always well received.  Honest differences of opinion and principled compromise often seem to be the victim of a determination to score points against one's opponents.

But the American people sent us here to be their voice.  They understand that those voices can at times become loud and argumentative, but they also hope we can disagree without being disagreeable.  At the end of the day, they expect both parties to work together to get the people's business done.

What they do not expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.

The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this Chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse.”

On the other hand, here is what Jay Carney, President Obama’s press secretary, said about the nuclear option last Friday:

“The President said in 2012, in the State of the Union address, ‘Some of what's broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days.  A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything -- even routine business -- passed through the Senate.  Neither party has been blameless in these tactics.  Now both parties should put an end to it.  For starters, I ask the Senate to pass a simple rule that all judicial and public service nominations receive a simple up or down vote within 90 days.’  Unfortunately, that recommendation has not been taken up by Republican leadership in the Senate.

And contained within that, those remarks that the President made in the well of the House at a State of the Union address, was an acknowledgement that this is a problem that has existed when -- and has been exacerbated in some ways by both parties.  But there is no question that it has gotten -- the world today is quite different than it was in 2005 when it comes to this issue in the Senate, and the way that it’s been run, and the obstructionism that we’ve seen from Republican leaders in the Senate and Republican members in the Senate.  It is not the same and it is a real problem.”

Of course, it is different today than in 2005.  Barack Obama is president today, not George W. Bush, and President Obama nominees are being blocked, not George W. Bush’s.  I see the difference.  Good people, i.e., Democratic nominees, are being blocked, not bad people, i.e., Republican nominees.  (Sorry for the sarcasm.)

Second, it will be interesting to see what happens because once the rule has changed, it is changed forever.  A change in the rules may help the Democrats now, but things will change, and it will help the Republicans in the future.  Megan McArdle writes here on why she thinks Republicans will have control in 2017.  If she is right, exercising the “nuclear option” will help the Republicans then.  And if it’s not then, it will be some other time.

That may not matter to Barack Obama.  After all, after January 20, 2017, he is out of office.  His focus is on the next three and one-half years.  What happens after that may not matter to him.  The same may be true for Harry Reid.  His term is up in 2016.  He’ll be 77 at that point.  He may not care about what happens after he is out of office, either.  But what about Democrats who will be, or hope to be, around after 2016?  What do they think?

I am sure that there are some good nominees that are being unfairly delayed, or even defeated, by use of the filibuster rule today.  But there were good nominees that were unfairly delayed and defeated when George W. Bush was president.  If the Democrats change the rules, it will help them today, and it will help Republicans in the future.  Whether it will be good for the country, either now or in the future, is another matter.

David Axelrod Says “Government Is So Vast” President Obama “Can’t Know” What’s Happening

Last week David Axelrod defended President Obama in connection with the IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups, saying “part of being President is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.” Not surprisingly, conservatives latched onto Mr. Axelrod’s statement as another reason to cut government: If the government is so big that the President can’t know what is going on, let alone control it, it needs to be cut it back. In fact, this response is so obvious it is a little surprising Mr. Axelrod said what he said. He certainly made sure President Obama didn’t say things like that in the 2008 campaign (or at least not many of them). Mr. Axelrod’s statement was a hanging curve ball, just waiting to be hit. But then, maybe Mr. Axelrod said it because the alternative, which was that the President can control government; he just didn’t in this case, is worse.

In any case, I certainly agree that it would be better if government did less. But I think Mr. Axelrod’s statement is not only a reason for government to do less. It is also a strong argument for the federal government to do less. Instead of the federal government trying to do everything, the duties of government should be divided among the various levels of government; i.e., federalism.

Federalism is a pet topic of mine.*  The checks and balances that the Constitution puts on the branches of the federal government are an important support of our freedom. But the division of powers, and duties, among the various levels of government is just as important, if not more so.

The idea of federalism is to divide up the powers, and duties, of government among the various levels of government, national, state and local. Part of the idea is to have things done by the lowest level of government that can do them. This keeps government closer to the people, which makes government more responsive. Also, being closer to the people means government is more likely to have direct information about the things it is trying to do. Most importantly, it is easier for people to control a government that is closer to them.

But another feature of federalism fits exactly into this situation. If each level of government focuses on what it does best vis-à-vis the other levels, then each level of government will have less to do. With less to do, it can do a better job of those things it actually does. And then maybe our leaders can have a better idea of what the government they are supposed to be leading is actually doing.
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* See here, here, here and here, among others.