FIVE POINTS: The Most and Least Vulnerable Politicians
1. Safe seats don't inherently reduce vulnerability. One well-known feature of contemporary national politics is the disappearance of competitive congressional districts and the rise of so-called "safe seats." This has been attached to all sorts of causes and consequences, but the basic premise is never challenged. And indeed, it shouldn't be: there is ample evidence---dating back to Mayhew's Vanishing Marginals article in 1974---that the number of competitive House districts has declined dramatically in the last half-century.
But it's important to remember that a decline in general election competitiveness of House seats does not imply a complete insulation of vulnerability of the polticians that hold those seats. And this is because the holders of the safe seats participate not just in general elections, but also in primaries. As Mayhew noted in The Electoral Connection, from the politician's point of view, there's no real difference between a primary and general election; they are all just another test to survive. Fear of primary challenge can be just as worrisome as fear of a general election, and in some ways more so: fewer voters turn out, and you can't rely on partisanship to carry you through.
Anthony King put this phenomenon in comparative perspective 20 years ago. From the vantage points of other democracies, American politicians are absurdly vulnerable. They face general elections absurdly often; the must raise all their own money; they are not shielded from primary challenges; and the weak party structure means they must stand on their own as individuals rather than anonymous party cogs. A member of parliament in a proportional representation system faces none of these challenges.
The consequences, of course, aren't hard to tease out: relative to legislators in other countries, members of Congress are hyper-responsive to their constituents, operate on a very short time-horizon of two years, spend a lot of time raising money, and generally behave in risk-averse ways when confronting tough decisions on high profile issues. But note that being in a "safe seat" doesn't really change this equation all that much if there is even the possibility of a credible primary challenge from the other direction.
And that's plainly where many GOP members stand right now: in seats/states described as "safe," but functionally operating under constraints that make them as vulnerable as ever to electoral challenge. As mentioned above, primary challenges are particularly insidious because they relieve you of your best and easiest weapon from the general election, the guaranteed support of co-partisans.
2. On the other hand, the least vulnerable politician is the retiring politician. This is another well-known phenomenon of politics: retiring elected officials show a lot more latitude in their political behavior. You see this all the time in election years (and particularly lame-duck sessions that occur after an election). Retiring members happily cast really tough votes that are twisting their colleagues into knots.
On the margin, it is probably helpful to party leaders, allowing them to grow the vote for agenda items that might otherwise be tricky for the majority, by turning a tough vote for a moderate into an easy call for a retiree. But it also can work the other way, where usually-reliable partisans suddenly decide to start going rogue once freed from the vulnerability. This is arguably why Senator McCain has felt so free to criticize the Trump administration and cast the decisive vote on ACA repeal.
This is important right now because there are a lot of potential retirements in Congress. Most importantly, Senator Corker announced his retirement this week. Freed of a tough primary and general election fight next year in Tennessee, it's entirely possible that Corker will enjoy his new latitude and begin pressing policy positions outside of the normal range of a vulnerable GOP Senator. Don't be surprised if he ramps up his criticism of the Trump administration, or if he decides to forcefully insert himself into the politics of tax reform in a manner antagonistic to the leadership.
Of course, even a retiring politician is subject to political constraints. Whatever Senator Corker personally thinks about any issue, he will still want to consider his non-political future and his political legacy. He may have private sector business objectives or even just friendships that he doesn't want to jeopardize, and those things may constrain him from expressing utterly true preferences. And he may also feel an obligation to his constituents. We tend to think of the legacy aspect of these things in regard to second term presidents, but they apply to legislators as well. Senator Corker may prefer himself to be remembered for things he's already done in Congress, rather than as a rogue retiree who scuttled tax reform.
3. The budget resolution is the keystone to action right now. The Fall calendar in Congress is coming into shape. There are some reauthorizations (FAA, CHIP, etc.) to complete and disaster funding from the hurricanes to approve. There are the FY2018 appropriations that are currently held over until December 8th and will need to be baragained-out by then. And there is the looming ghost of ACA repeal and the possibility of bipartisan adjustment on health care. Otherwise, it looks like tax reform is going to be the focus.
And it looks like tax reform is going to proceed along a path that, if you squint really hard, you might be able to pretend is regular order, at least in comparison to what happened on ACA repeal. You had a rollout of broad principles this week as a starting point of negotiation, and it appears that the October and November calendar will include committee hearings, position-taking and bargaining among members in both public and private, and a lot of weighing-in from outside interest groups. That's not exactly to regular order, but it's not insane! (Unless they try to rush it through in October, which is possible.)
The first key, however, will be the FY2018 budget resolution. On the current trajectory, the GOP is going to try to do partisan tax reform. That is, they are going to try to assemble a coalition of all the GOP House majority and 50 Senate Republicans to pass a plan developed, written, and negotiated within the party. This can only be done via the reconciliation process, and the reconciliation process can only proceed if reconciliation instructions are written and passed in a budget resolution. That doesn't mean a budget resolution is required in order to begin the public debate or the debate in committee, but it does mean a budget resolution will ultimately be required to proceed on a partisan basis.
This raises two distinct questions:
Can the GOP pass a budget resolution?
If so, when do you pass the budget resolution?
I think it is likely they will be able to get a budget resolution, but it will not be without costs to at least some members of the coalition. Besides being the vehicle for reconciliation instructions, a budget resolultion effectively sets the limit for total spending by Congress for the year and indicates the priorities of those who vote for it. This provides a leverage opportunity, and the House Freedom Caucus has been pushing for a budget that signals (and perhaps implements) sizable cuts in mandatory spending over the next 10 years, which may be unpalatable to House GOP moderates, and definitely will be unpalatable to Senate GOP moderates. Adjudicating that fight may have negative costs to one group or another, and perhaps for the leadership that tries to negotiate the deal.
Deciding *when* to pass the budget resolution is also a bit tricky. One option is to do it now, which would at least get the fight over. It would also provide momentum for the tax push (especially if leaders want to do it on an accelerated schedule) and create a "win" for the GOP, small as it would be. One problem with this strategy is that it might require solving the FY2018 appropriations fight early. There's a point of order in the Senate against a budget resolution that breaks the statutory Budget Control Act (BCA) spending caps, which means the Democrats could technically halt the budget resolution in order to gain leverage over the negotiations that are going to be necessary to raise the caps for the FY2018 appropriations, which right now are universally agreed to be too low. On the other hand, the Dems may not want to argue for lower cap levels, which is what they would effectively be doing. It's also possible that the GOP could use some accounting or procedral gimmicks to get around this. But it's a potential problem.
The argument for waiting on a budget resolution (until, say, January) is that it would allow you to get the December fight out of the way, solve the appropriations/BCA deal with the Democrats, and then write a "shell" budget (like the FY2017 budget) that is really just a vehicle for reconciliation instructions for tax reform. That may be easier (not clear if it would anger the Freedom Caucus), but it definitely has costs. It would mean tax reform can't possibly occur in 2017, which might start to worry members if they think it will be tougher in an election year. It might annoy Budget Committee Chairwoman Black, who spent the better part of the last year trying to put together a real budget in the House and would probably like an accomplishment to show off as she runs for governor in Tennessee. And it would leave the House with another month right now where they accomplish nothing.
4. I wrote a couple of blog posts this week. The first was on the politics of disaster relief for Puerto Rico, you can find it here. I also wrote about the recursive nature of primary challenges on the right, you can find it here.
5. Twitter going specifically to 280 characters is dumb. Twitter announced this week that they will be testing out giving users double the 140 characters currently allowed for a tweet. A lot of people on Twitter think this is the end of world; I don't really care. I'm mostly amused that Twitter defended this action, in part, by noting that the 140 character limit was completely arbitrary. That's true, but also completely irrelevant given their solution.
If you double an arbitrary number, all you've done is create a new arbitrary number. Twitter could have done a lot of research or thinking or focus-group work and found out exactly how many characters would meet their user demand or their normative vision of the service. And maybe they did! But I find it really funny they ultimately went with the old Mom and Pop general store pricing theory of just doubling what you paid wholesale. The most arbitrary solution to the problem.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!