FIVE POINTS: December is the New September
1. The Harvey / Debt Limit / CR deal has lots of angles. On Wednesday, President Trump and congressional leaders agreed to a deal that would provide an initial round of hurricane relief funding, extend FY2017 appropriations via a continuing resolution to keep the government open through December 8th, and suspend the debt limit through the same date. The bill passed the Senate 80-17 yesterday and the House 316-90 today. As a general analytical matter, I group the politics of these sorts of things into three categories:
Policy/Agenda. The deal itself is pretty standard. There was going to be hurricane funding. There was going to be a continuing resolution. And the debt limit was going to be raised. There's nothing at all odd about this package per se. The real questions are (1) did anyone miss an opportunity to extract greater concessions; and (2) what does this do to the policy agenda, given that it forces all three issues back on the table in December. Most observers think the GOP got a raw deal here, and also take Josh Huder's view that this is going to suck up the time and oxygen in DC to do tax reform this fall. Others, like Dave Hopkins and Jonathan Bernstein, think it's much ado about nothing, since tax reform was unlikely anyway and no one has really been able to leverage the debt ceiling all that much in the recent past.
Electoral Politics. I suspect this doesn't penetrate much at the voter level. Agenda consequences aside, most voters will only dimly perceive what has happened, and most of it will look pretty normal/good. The government is funding hurricane relief, the government isn't shutting down, the government didn't default, and the president negotiated a deal with the opposition party. Those are dog-bites-man stories. Individual members can vote or not vote for the deal, but most will have a pretty easy time explaining their votes to constituents. Some Republicans might get squeezed from one side or the other with bad optics for either voting no on hurricane relief or yes on a clean debt limit increase, but I just don't see this as even close to the most consequential vote this fall.
Party Politics. This is where potentially big consequences lie. Conservative congressional Republicans seemed pretty upset at the president for accepting the Democrats' opening negotiating offer, but some of the blame is going to inevitably end up on Speaker Ryan, because (1) he was in the negotiation; (2) the congressional Republicans have better leverage over him; and (3) it's politics, and opportunists abound. Ryan easily got the votes in the House today, and it's certainly not the case that the knives are out for the Speaker. But former Speaker Boehner was really good at giving his right flank show votes and at taking their heat after he made them eat deals. Ryan didn't offered them all that much on this one, and is also dealing with a hostile White House. He's in a difficult situation, with a fractured caucus and a weak president who is awkwardly leading/not leading the party. And this deal does nothing to relieve the pressure.
2. Don't overstate the implications of the Dent/Reichert retirements. Two moderate Republican House members, Charlie Dent (PA-15) and Dave Reichert (WA-8), announced yesterday they would not be running for reelection to the 116th Congress next year. In one sense, this is a big deal. It creates two open seat races in districts that could plausibly be Democratic pickups, and it also sends an important signal: vulnerable retirements are a leading indicator for party losses in midterm elections.
But don't go crazy here. These are only the 6th and 7th retirement announcements in the House, and in a typical year, you'll see 20-30 retirements. People retire for lots of reasons, and while they often are connected to a difficult upcoming election (such as Dent's prospect of a quality challenger in both the primary and general), they usually aren't connected to massive national trends. This isn't a clear signal that all the GOP moderates are running for the exits because Trump is an electoral anchor or because voters are going to punish a do-nothing Congress. Either might eventually happen, but this is not the smoking gun.
On the other hand, Dent's statement announcing his retirement had a pretty good parting shot at his party. We've seen a fair number of retirees (Olympia Snowe comes to mind) have harsh words about the climate on Capitol Hill and the perceived institutional dysfunction, but Dent specifically takes a shot at his own party, calling himself "a member of the governing wing of the Republican Party." All majorities have coalitional divisions, but the blunt openness about it in the current GOP strikes me as unusual.
3. Discharge petitions rarely succeed. Democrats filed a discharge petition yesterday to try to force a vote on the DREAM Act. The idea of a discharge petition is simple: if a majority of the Members of the House want to consider a bill, they can sign a petition and theoretically bypass all veto players. So if a majority of the House signs the DREAM Act discharge, it can get to the floor against the wishes of committee or leadership gatekeepers.There are lots of problems, however, that it make it very difficult in practice.
First, the petition is public. So rank-and-file Members of the majority bear costs for signing on, whether the petition succeeds or not. And the costs can be significant. Leadership does not like to tolerate procedural defections, and has plenty of tools to punish it. In addition, they have a lot of procedural tactics to delay or preempt a discharge petition even if it does gather the necessary votes. So for many majority MCs, there's a pretty simple calculus against signing, even if you agree with the underlying legislation.
Remember, Member goals can be grouped into three baskets: reelection, increased power, and good public policy. Hard choices occur when these goals are put in conflict. Supporting the DREAM Act may be good reelection politics and good public policy for a GOP moderate, but bad for your power in Congress. Very bad.
But there are substitute ways to forcefully position-take without annoying the leadership. Introducing a bill, for instance. Or cosponsoring one. It's true that these things won't win the policy, but they do strongly signal positions to the voters, and they don't sacrifice power. Leadership understands Members might disagree with them on policy and need to vote against them on substance or signal to their constituents about an issue. But agenda control is sacrosanct for leadership. Both because they want total agenda control on any issue, and they want to dissuade attempts at hijacking other issues.
Many moderate GOP members may want to pass the DREAM Act or some other adjustment to DACA. But for most Members, finding a way to signal their support to constituents is a reasonable substitute for actually winning the policy, especially when the cost of actually trying to win the policy---in terms of power---is too high to justify. And that's OK! It's not an indictment of spineless politicians. Members have to consider the long run across all issues. Winning one policy while losing all your power in the House is probably not a net gain for your district. And even if you see the DREAM Act as a moral issue, losing power/leverage on future moral issues may not be good for your district either.
4. I really can't imagine Obamacare repeal coming back. In a little-noticed decision, the Senate parliamentarian last week ruled that budget resolution reconciliation instructions expire at the end of the fiscal year for which they were crafted. The upshot to this is that the reconciliation instructions in the FY2017 resolution, which provide for the mechanism to repeal Obamacare in the Senate via majority vote, won't be available after September. (The parliamentarian doesn't have final say on such matters; the full Senate could overturn such a ruling, but rarely does.)
You might think this is completely academic in nature, but there were rumblings from a couple places this week about trying to squeeze through the Graham / Cassidy / Heller repeal bill before the new deadline. I think the chances of that happening are very, very close to zero. Almost everyone has moved on. This morning, President Trump pretty clearly moved on:
It can be hard to describe what "moved on" actually means in politics. At the nuts and bolts level, it just means that most Members would rather do something else with the time and resources. But why?
I think it's largely an implicit expected value calculation, but with a new, large downside. In theory, it might be feasible to get Graham/Cassidy passed, but it's clearly a longshot. And there is definitely opportunity cost. But there's also a new negative: the ridicule/incompetence cost goes way up when a unified government fails and then comes back at it again, only to fail again. So it's not just a repeat of the original failure cost. The thought of revisiting repeal and it failing again probably terrifies many Republicans, who are smarting enough from losing once (twice?) and know another failure would surely make them more or less public laughingstocks.
Never say never on the Hill, but this is not something to get excited about, whether you are a supporter or opponent of repeal.
5. This kid does an astounding LedZep II-era Robert Plant impression. It is *not* easy to replicate Zeppelin. But just listen to this song. Not a bad Jimmy Page on the guitar either. The band is Greta Van Fleet.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!