FIVE POINTS: The Three Phases of the 115th Congress
1. The third phase of the 115th Congress is almost upon us. My broad take on the 115th Congress is that it will ultimately have three phases. The first phase was the partisan phase, in which the GOP took advantage of the unified government that emerged from the 2016 election and attempted to pass major legislation that reflected longstanding party priorities, namely the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. With each of those policies---tax reform and health care reform---leadership could have pursued a bipartisan approach, but instead chose to use the budget reconciliation process in an attempt to pass party-line legislation. That's a totally reasonable strategy for a unified government, perhaps even one demanded by their wider party network, and also well in line with how previous recent unified governments have operated (such as the Democrats in 2009-2010). This phase ran from the beginning of the 115th through the end of 2017.
The second phase of the 115th was the bipartisan phase. This phase featured a host of issues that either (1) couldn't be dealt with in a partisan manner because procedural realities, (2) had no hope of passing in any form on a partisan basis, or (3) were issues that might awaken cross-party coalitions. Put the raising of the BCA spending caps and the FY2018 omnibus appropriations in box 1 (and maybe 2 and 3), the debt limit in box 2, and disaster relief, CHIP reauthorization, infrastructure spending, and immigration in in boxes 1, 2, and 3. The basic structure of the bipartisan phase was brinksmanship negotiations centered around hard deadlines for government shutdowns and debt limit defaults, and the signature moment of the phase was the massive bipartisan February 9 deal on the spending caps, CHIP, disaster relief, tax extenders, and the debt limit. But, of course, the various CRs along the way from September 8 through the ultimate resolution of the omnibus prior to March 23 will also count as part of this phase. Whether a DACA/border deal emerges from this phase is still an open question.
The final phase of the 115th Congress, I would suggest, will be the stalemate phase. It doesn't look like the Republican leaders are going to try to move a budget resolution this spring, which will foreclose the use of the reconciliation process for passing partisan legislation. And with the election looming in November, there is little incentive for either party to engage in major compromise as they position themselves on issues for the campaign. The Democrats have almost no incentive to hand President Trump a major bipartisan policy achievement on something like infrastructure, and they will be loathe to work on the FY2019 appropriations when putting them off until January might result in them controlling one or both chambers of Congress and being in a better negotiating position. Likewise, GOP conservatives are probably not enthused about taking votes on large spending bills or an infrastructure package during either primary or general election season.
So aside from routine big things the annual National Defense Authorization Act, it's hard to imagine what Congress accomplishes between now an the election. There is one more hard deadline---they will need to pass a continuing resolution by September 30th to keep the government open, which will require bipartisan support but will likely go off with a whimper rather than bang. Six weeks before the election, it is unlikely anyone will want to introduce that sort of uncertainty. And so I would wager we will see a largely clean CR that doesn't involve much brinksmanship. The remaining wildcard is immigration, which didn't make it into the February 9 deal and is causing all sorts of headaches for leaders of both parties. I won't pretend to know how that will play out, but more on that below.
2. DACA: Who wants a policy and who wants an issue? The DACA issue died, at least temporarily, in the Senate yesterday, when a variety of proposals all failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to pass under the consent agreement. This followed on the heels of the president issuing a veto threat against the most popular proposal---a bipartisan deal that got 54 votes---and the Department of Homeland Security issuing a scathing statement about the proposed deal.
It is not at all clear what, if anything, is going to happen to DACA in the coming weeks, but it seems like more action is likely. There is some GOP rumbling in the House to take up the Goodlatte bill, which is a more conservative proposal that includes cuts to legal immigration an which is almost certainly a dead-letter in the Senate. The president continues to stand by his "four pillars" but has not offered a specific proposal. Speaker Ryan continues to profess a willingness to take up "a bill that the president will sign." Majority Leader McConnell declared this week a waste, but is "optimistic" they can return to it. And all the GOP leaders seem to be blaming the Democrats for the Senate failure, arguing that they want an issue and not a policy.
That charge---that the Dems want an immigration camapign issue rather than a policy enactment---has been a recurring rhetorical theme from the GOP over the last 10 years. I remember it distinctly when the DREAM Act failed in 2010. Despite the fact that the DREAM Act had majority support in both chambers and was blocked by a GOP filibuster, the GOP story became that the Democrats didn't want a bargain, and instead preferred an issue that would activate Hispanic-American voters against the GOP. This charge is now being repeated almost verbatim, again despite the fact that the bipartisan deal yesterday had majority support in the Senate and was blocked by GOP obstruction.
While I'm quite sure the Democrats would prefer some DACA policies to just having a campaign issue, it's also entirely possible that they don't really want to cut any plausible deal the GOP would accept and will happily bank the issue for November. The shape of a DACA deal has been obvious for a long time: some measure of adjustment for DACA participants in exchange for some level of increased border security funding, with some side goodies to smooth it out. It could be a small deal, with minimal extension of protections and less money, or a large deal with a path to citizenship and a ton of border security money. But the issue has never been the shape of the deal; it's been getting all sides to agree to any deal. And much of it hangs on two features of the politics: how getting to a deal affects the party leaders, who are both being drawn taut by fractures in their caucuses over the issue, and how the issue plays in an election year with the midterms looming.
This general version of the second question---do you want a policy or do you want a campaign issue?---has been at the root of party legislative strategy since the dawn of the republic, and there's no easy answer at any given moment which is the better choice. One reason for Democrats to not want a deal in an election year is that the lack of a deal may put the president in a real bind: immigration was perhaps his signature campaign issue; for him to fail to secure funding in two years of unified government for a wall will be a stain on his resume. Couple that with the looming deadline (though perhaps extended by the courts) which may force the White House to either start deporting people or find non-legislative adjustments to the policy, and you an sort of see why Democrats may prefer for a deal to collapse.
But my sense is that it's the GOP---and particularly Speaker Ryan---who don't really want a deal. Not so much because they would prefer to have an issue for the campaign, but because the issue is imperiling Ryan's position as leader within the caucus. Having the deal die in the Senate, and then having the Goodlatte bill squeeze through the House (but assuredly die in the Senate), is probably the best result for Ryan vis a vis his caucus. On the other hand, having to take up and pass a Senate-approved bipartisan deal could very well endanger his Speakership. Looming in the background to all of this is the omnibus, which may be the last chance for Trump to get significant money for a wall.
But notice how much the election shapes the politics here. It's not just a question of how members vote on bills. It's the choice of what bills leaders decide to bring to the floor, what amendments are allowed to get votes on the floor, and where the vulnerable 2018 Senators are from. Hopeless Senate amendments that require 60 votes may seem like a waste of time, but having to go on record about controversial issues is precisely what both parties want to make vulnerable members of the opposition do. As it happens right now, there are very few vulnerable GOP Senators, but a host of vulnerable Dems. That McConnell wanted an "open" amendment process on DACA had as much to do with the GOP being able to put the vulnerable Dems to tough votes as it did to actually passing a policy. So who wants an issue and who wants a policy? Quite possibly, everyone wants both.
3. You need to read Dave Hopkins blog. He's the best political science blogger you'e never heard of, and he's woefully under-followed on Twitter and almost assuredly under-read. And he writes efficiently; you get a lot of bang per paragraph. Here he is yesterday on Trump and the GOP.
4. Guns are pretty standard interest group politics. Sometimes I get the sense that people think there's something magical about the NRA or gun-rights voters or the corporate interests of gun manufactures. That a gun control policy (such as waiting periods to buy handguns) can have massive public support but still not be able to get approved by Congress seems, to many people, to defy all common sense about politics in a democracy. How could it be a losing proposition for a member of Congress to support a policy favored by a massive majority (often 85%+) of people?
It's actually pretty easy, an it's quite common. I've written about this before, but it's worth going through it again. Certain gun control measures are an extreme example of the phenomenon, but it's more or less normal for policies supported by strong majorities to not be enacted by legislatures.
There are a few things going on here. First, intensity matters. Think about how the majority and minority are constructed in handgun waiting period polls. The 90% who favor them are mostly people who basically never think about handguns until the moment the pollster asks, and whose support for the policy largely ends as soon as the polling question ends. They passively support the policy, but it's not particularly part of what shapes their voting decision. Now think about the 10% who oppose the policy. What is their profile? Well, they probably think about gun rights a lot, they may very well donate money to the NRA, they probably talk to friends about their position on guns, and they are far more likelier to be single-issue voters who will not support any candidate who is liberal on guns.
Put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress. From an electoral perspective, opinion polls on single issues are not really what you are interested in; you are interested in how those polls translate into votes. If you take a strong gun control position, the vast majority will approve of the position but probably not ultimately make their vote decision based upon it. Almost no one who was opposed to you previously will now support. The 10% you annoy, however, will almost surely turn against you even if they were with you before. In effect, it can cost you votes.
The NRA is another piece of the story that many tend to get wrong. People get all caught up in them donating money to candidates, but that's not really what makes them powerful. They are mostly powerful because they can activate a massive number of single-issue voters. One traditional method of doing this is to "score" votes. Like many interest groups, the NRA chooses a set of votes in Congress that they consider to be about gun issues, and then they grade each member of Congress on how often they support the NRA position. Then they reveal these scores to NRA members and make endorsements of candidates. Because of the size of the NRA membership and their willingness to be single-issue gun voters, many members of Congress feel obligated to have 100% vote ratings from the NRA. This, in turn, gives the NRA leverage---even just the decision about whether to score a vote or not has implications on the House floor. And it thus makes the NRA a large player when leaders are negotiating bill language with interests. And that's ok. Groups that have 5 million dues-paying members should be influential in politics!
Again, none of this is underhanded or wrong or specific to the NRA. Well organized, intense minorities will always have outsized influence in politics. That can distort outcomes relative to opinion polls, but again, individual vote choices by citizens have to weigh all issues across all policy areas.Citizens who are willing to be single-issue voters obtain more leverage over one policy at the expense of their leverage over all others. But there's a fair case that intense minorities should have some say and our system shouldn't be strictly majoritarian. Gun control is an extreme example of this---and for the record, I have pretty goofy views on guns but I'm no friend of the NRA---but it isn't some peculiar institution built on a conspiracy. It's simply normal democratic politics.
5. Reminder: We have a podcast! This week we had CQ Roll Call budget an appropriations reporter Jennifer Shutt as a guest, and she was fantastic. You can listen to the episode here. You can subscribe on iTunes here. And our RSS feed is here.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!