Summer Break Finally Hits Capitol Hill
Five Points.
1. The state of play in Congress heading into August recess. Excellent overview from one of the best congressional reporters, Matt Fuller.
Two points I'd add: first, not passing health care may cause some headaches for GOP members at home over recess, but nothing like what would have happened if they had passed health care. Whatever cerebral anger can be stirred up by conservatives who wanted repeal, it's crocodile tears compared to the visceral anger that would have been stirred up by those who actually lost their health care. I suspect some GOP members got the best possible outcome here: they got to vote for repeal, but they didn't actually have to take away anyone's health care. That's a recipe for Minimizing Irate Constituents on all sides, which is never a bad thing for an elected official trapped in this sort of political environment.
Second, we have something of an unknown over recess with the president. This will be the longest Congress has been out of session since Trump became POTUS, and you can expect the spotlight focus to be back on him. With a new and potentially powerful chief of staff, the WH may be able to take advantage of this and recover their approval number a bit. Or the focus could be devastating for them. Who knows. But he will have the stage mostly to himself for 4+ weeks. One non-intuitive thing to remember: Trump has actually remained more steady in polling when Russia/scandal was the focus, as opposed to policy issues like health care.
2. The September agenda is packed, and interconnected. (1) FY2018 Appropriations. (2) Debt Limit. (3) Budget Resolution. (4) Tax reform. (5) BCA spending caps. The GOP can't do #1 or #2 without Dems. They can't do #4 without either the Dems or #3. They may not be able to do #3 without #5. And they definitely can't do #1 without #5. And they can't do #5 without the Dems. Look for some serious negotiating next month. And some potentially large package deals across these areas. And a punt on taxes to the Fall. Did you notice Health Care wasn't even on this list? Did I mention there are only 12 days of session next month?
3. Don't fall for the UC trap regarding recess appointments. A lot of people read this Hill article yesterday, which strongly implies that the Senate unanimously voted to prevent Trump from being able to make recess appointments during August break, by agreeing to hold pro forma sessions every three days. This was painted as a strong rebuke of the president by his own party. The whole GOP wants to block the recess appointment power?!?!?
Be skeptical. "Unanimous consent" (UC) is a routine method of quickly getting non-controversial things done in the Senate. If no one objects (i.e. there is unanimous consent), any rule of the Senate can be set aside to quickly move through business. "I ask unanimous consent to pass S. 32 as amended." If no objects, the bill passes. No vote, no debate, no nothing. "I ask unanimous consent that the treaty be approved." Ditto. Because the regular order Senate rules are so cumbersome, UC is used daily for any number of things with wide agreement. But it's also used a second way: to speed things up when the results are foregone conclusions.
The key here is that UC does not mean "universal agreement." It often means, "let's just get this over with." And yesterday was a good example. Under the constitution, in order to adjourn for more than 3 days, the Senate would need the consent of the House. This is usually done via an adjournment resolution, which isn't debatable (and thus can't be filibustered) but does need a majority to pass. So if 3 GOP Senators wanted to prevent recess appointments, they could just join with the Dems to oppose the adjournment resolution. At that point, the Senate would have no choice but to hold pro forma sessions to comply with the Constitution. And once holding pro formas was a foregone conclusion, the procedure for bringing them about would be a UC, just to save everyone time. Very routine.
And, in fact, it's possible *no* GOP Senators opposed recess appointments. The Dems could not use a traditional filibuster against an adjournment resolution, but they might have been able to play some procedural games to drag out consideration of the resolution or otherwise make the cost of doing it too high for the majority. Or, as Jonathan Bernstein pointed out on Twitter, the pro forma sessions could have been a bargaining chip the GOP gave the Dems in order to ease the passage of the slew of nominations that the Dems had been slow-rolling, 60+ of which went through lightning fast---you guessed it, by UC---yesterday. In the Senate, remember, everything is connected and (almost) everything is a deal.
4. Politico Playbook? Axios AM? WaPo 202 Daily? It has come to my attention that people outside DC are not familiar with these crush-of-news-and-analysis emails. If you want to embed yourself in the political media firehose like a Beltway insider, sign up for them. You'll at least see what it feels like to be here. Get Playbook here. Axios AM here. WaPo 202 Daily here. Recess issues will be shorter and lighter on content, but still hilariously odd if you've never seen them.
5. Hysteria turned 30 yesterday. Here's Rob Harvilla with a lovely valentine to it. One of the first must-have cassettes of my tween years. Kids loved MJ when I was little, and Slippery When Wet had been super popular, but this album absolutely dominated my 4th grade, the first true adolescent-style music craze of my life. I specifically remember a birthday party where everyone was supposed to bring a different tape, and like 6 kids brought Hysteria.
Hysteria was also my introduction to the absurdities of rock criticism contrarianism, because by spring 1988, a fair number of the guys in my class were arguing Side B of Hysteria was better. This is nonsense: Side A consists of six singles, whereas side B is the song Hysteria and a bunch of filler trash, like Don't Shoot Shotgun. To make an argument for Side B is to become an anti-middlebrow rock critic; you have to assume the position that anything popular is automatically suspect, and the real gems are in tracks the masses will never appreciate.
So kids were running stuff like "Side A is overplayed" and "Gods of War is just awesome once you understand it" and "Run Riot is better than Animal." Just nonsense. But also an early introduction to the endless times I heard the analog arguments in my 20s against mainstream popular rock and in favor of "challenging" "complicated" music that was mostly garbage.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!