FIVE POINTS: Shut the Front Door
***It's an all-shutdown edition this week!***
1. I wrote up a wonky explainer on shutdowns. You can find it here. 100% free of politics. Instead, lots of this:
So when there is a shutdown, the whole government just stops operating?
Not exactly. Under the Constitution, no money can be drawn from from the Treasury. That is, no outlays of actual money to creditors. But the Constitution doesn’t prohibit the government from incurring obligations; the government is theoretically still free to enter into contracts, hire and employ labor, etc. They just can’t pay off these obligations. Kinda like if you had a credit card, but no ability to pay it at the end of the month because your checking account was frozen.
But my friend is a federal employee, and he’s not going to be allowed to go to work during a shutdown.
That’s right, because while the Constitution only prohibits disbursement, there’s a federal law (the Anti-Deficiency Act) that prohibits the obligation of federal money in the absence of an appropriation, with criminal penalties for agency heads who violate it. In effect, the ADA freezes the credit card, whereas the Constitution freezes the checking account. So if your friend’s agency had him come to work, it would be in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act, because the agency would be obligating money without an appropriation, but it would not be in violation of the Constitution, because your friend’s salary would not be disbursed from the Treasury.
2. I don't see a Democratic filibuster coming today. I really don't. I could be proven completely wrong in a matter of hours, but I have a hard time seeing the Democrats conducting a filibuster here that leads to a shutdown. I wrote this up on Twitter this morning, but I think the Democratic play here is simply an effort at trying to maximize their leverage by proving the Republicans don't have 50 votes in the Senate. If the GOP does prove they have 50 votes, I think the Dems will ultimately help pass the CR by 70+ votes.
The Senate is 50-49 right now (McCain being absent). There are basically four groups in the Senate right now in regard to the current CR (which funds the government until February 16, extends CHIP for 6 years, and waives two Obamacare taxes temporarily): there are about 46 Republicans who are loyal to McConnell and want to pass the bill as is. There are four Republicans (Paul, Lee, Graham, Flake) who appear to be against the CR. There are 40 to 45 Democrats who are loyal to Schumer and currently stand opposed to the bill, and there are 5-10 red state Dems who may buck Schumer and vote for the current bill with the GOP.
The play by Schumer right now is to try to force an up/down vote on the bill, and hope it fails. The Democrats may even support cloture in order to get to this point. If McConnell can't get some combination of the iffy GOP votes and the red state Dem votes to get to 50, he'll be forced to amend the CR toward the Dems. It would just be very hard to not be able to get to 50 votes and then somehow blame the Democrats for a shutdown. Of course, McConnell could just refuse to hold that vote, but that would hardly help his public case.
Now, if McConnell *does* have 50 votes, I think the dynamic totally changes. Because that means the Dems would need to wage a minority filibuster to block the bill, and McConnell could then credibly claim that the shutdown was the fault of the Dems. For that reason, I don't think Schumer will press his caucus to conduct that filibuster. I just don't think he's in the mood for that sort of risky play right now. Instead, I think once it's clea there are 50 votes and the CR could pass absent a filibuster, many Dems will want to vote for it. After all, it has CHIP and it doesn't reduce their leverage next month. I'd expect 70+ votes for the CR, once it's known it will pass. Only the hardcore, DACA-intense liberals will vote no.
3. The House is threatening to jam the Senate the old-fashioned way. There is reporting that the House is going to make the ultimate jam move today: leave town having passed their version of a bill that is on a deadline clock. This is an old-school power play move. But I'm skeptical they are actually going to follow through on this and send their members home.
It's a really risky move if they don't know that there are the votes in the Senate for their bill. Because if the Senate deadlocks and the House is gone, you have a massive headache: any changes made in the Senate would need to be voted on in the House, which means you'd have to drag the Members back to DC. The House is not scheduled to be in session next week, so the Members are going home on the plan that they won't be back until Monday night, February 26th.
Now, it is true that going home may increase the pressure on the Senate to get a deal done. But I just don't see it. The number of Senators swayed by the House jamming and running is probably lower than the number who would simply shrug, say "well, they're idiots" and not worry about it.
So yeah, the House may jam and run. They may know a deal is at hand. But it may all be for show. It's entirely possible they are telling their members to hold tight and stick around this afternoon in case they need to vote on something tonight.
Because the *last* thing you want to be is a House leader who sends his members home, only to have to recall them over the weekend or early next week on their recess. Members' jobs don't end when they fly home, and having to cancel a meeting with a district group of senior citizens in order to come clean up a mess because you didn't let them know they had to stick around in the first place is the kind of thing that destroys goodwill between leadership and rank-and-file.
BREAKING UPDATE: The House leadership is now asking members to be "flexible" and stick around. Also, minority whip Hoyer just called their bluff and moved to adjourn on the floor of the House. Everyone voted against it. They aren't going anywhere until there's a deal in the Senate.
4. Follow these people for shutdown coverage. Here are some of my favorite hill reporters on Twitter for shutdown coverage: @mepfuller, @nielslenewski, @brespolitico, @mkraju, @JakeSherman, @JenniferShutt, @ScottWongDC, @StevenTDennis.
For political science analysis: @mollyreynolods, @bindersab, @ProfStevenSmith, @jbview, @DaveAHopkins, @joshHuder, @jiwallner.
5. You should be wary of public opinion polls on single issues like DACA. I've written about this before, but be very careful about taking single-issue polling and deciding it translates into obvious electoral effects for politicians who support or oppose it.
The reason this is so important is that approval ratings (and elections) are not about repeatedly winning majoritarian support for individual policy decisions; they are about winning aggregate approval and winning indivisible votes. At the micro-level, the relationship is a simple equation: how much net approval did a particular policy decisions gain or cost you? If it gained you aggregate approval, then from a pure rating point of view, it's a good thing. If it didn't, it's not.
The problem is that we don't know how much the DACA position of POTUS gained or lost in actual total approval rating. For example, if all 76 who agree with his new position aren't going to change their position on approval (regardless of whether they approve or not), but 10 of the 15 who disagree with him now *are* going to change their opinion from approval to disapproval, POTUS just lost 10 points on his approval rating. By adopting a position that is favored by 3/4 of Americans! The opposite situation---where a POTUS takes a very unpopular position but manages to gain aggregate support---is also possible. The point is that the aggregate level of support of the policy is theoretically irrelevant in regard to its effect on approval rating (or electoral gain/loss).
And that's the key here: the level of support for a policy choice may be correlated with approval or electoral support and/or net change in approval or electoral support, but it doesn't have to be. The only way the issue polling data could be definitive in its effect is if all Americans were single-issue votes/approvers. But they aren't, so we need more information. Ask yourself which is a bigger number: the number of Trump supporters who might turn against him over this DACA position, or the number of opponents who might become supporters over this DACA decision. Those two numbers combine to the net approval effect, and that's the number we're interested in. My guess is that there are many more supporters who will desert than opponents who will join up.
Lurking behind this is the issue of intensity of preference. Ask 100 people how they feel about a policy issue, and you'll find that some oppose it and others support it. But only a small portion of those people will consider it relevant to their vote choice on election day or their general approval of a politician, and an even smaller fraction will be single-issue voters/approvers on the topic. When those intensities are not evenly distributed among the opinion, that's a good recipe for the electoral/approval effects to be strongly skewed in reference to the policy opinion numbers. Seventy-six of our 100 oppose deportation, and 15 support it. But what if only 5% of the opposed see it as a key approval issue, and 50% of the pro-deportation crowd do. I have no idea if those numbers are correct, but it's not insane. And at those numbers, it's a net loser for POTUS on his approval rating.
The bottom line is that DACA (or gun control, or whatever) can be favored by a huge majority when taking a survey, but can cost a politician votes if she adopts the very popular position.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!