I don’t agree. Until recently, Congress has been able to get things passed, regardless who was in the White House, and regardless who controlled the Senate and House. Take a look at Sarbanes-Oxley, and No Child Left Behind, and the Immigration Reform under Reagan. Until Obama’s election, the governing ethic was to introduce something, horse trade until there were enough votes to pass each house, and then resolve the differences in Committee.
The difference now is that the Tea Party won’t compromise, and Boehner puts his own service as Speaker above the national interest. Someone remarked above that Boehner is stuck because he could lose a no confidence vote. Garbage. Boehner can pass virtually anything he wants using centrist Repubs and Dems. But he won’t, because with only a handful of exceptions he won’t bring anything to the floor unless a majority of his caucus will vote for it. His choice, and I have no sympathy.
The Constitution envisioned a need to bargain. The checks and balances assume that no branch can do anything it wants if it’s opposed by the other two. That’s a recipe for compromise, not paralysis.
McConnell is like Gingrich and Bill Frist before him: he thought he could break the government by ignoring the boundaries and unwritten rules of propriety that made our inherently unworkably governmental system work take power and then depend on the desire of Democrats to actually govern to make them pretend like he hadn’t already destroyed those boundaries. And, like them, he over-estimated the number of Democrats who’d be willing to do that and the extent to which they’d agree to do it. And his special problem is that there’s nothing left. He broke the last unbreached rules and Democrats aren’t going to make nice.
Boehner, of course, has no idea that governance is part of his job. By the time he got the gavel, Republican House norms had disintegrated to the point that they cannot conceive of governance being a thing they do. If a Republican was president, they’d fall in line and join together to do some structured, concerted destruction, but without one, it’s all about rage that the explosions they keep trying to set off aren’t big enough.
It seems to me the right flank of the Speaker would have learned by now how this plays out. Boehner talks real tough for awhile to appease the the ultra conservative right flank. Then he allows himself to be painted into a corner by the Senate because he knows the upper chamber will send him a compromise bill at the last minute. At which time he tells them " listen we have no other choice but to pass the senate’s version or we’ll get blamed by the American people and our brand will be ruined." Whats amazing to me is they keep getting suckered into the position…#washrinsereat
The authors of the article and most comments here appear to me to be viewing the Republican performance through the eyes of people who think that the party in power should govern. That is not the goal of the Republican Party. As many others on the intertoobes have noted, the Republican goal is to dismantle most of government. The fact that things appear dysfunctional to us is exactly as things should be. Dismantling the social safety nets, removing all governmental oversight of industry, dismantling any program or approach that benefits the common good, moving the tax burden further down the ladder, increasing income and wealth disparity – these are all part of their goals. They’ve never hidden any of this, and indeed, and run campaigns based on much of it. What we are experiencing is exactly what should be happening as they continue to achieve these goals.
Every form of democratic governance is dependent on a need to bargain in some way or another. Witness the bargaining it takes to form a coalition government - in the U.K., in Greece, In Israel.
It seems to me that the constitution was written under the assumption that the folks doing the governing would be products of the enlightenment: educated; either formally or skilled and self-taught; “honorable gentlemen” - men of property, mostly. Legislative power was deliberately skewed toward agrarian [aka slavery] interests. And this worked for a while. But that was then and this is now. Now we have an ethnically heterogeneous population that no longer has a large contingent of slaves. Population is highly concentrated in cities whose citizens are statistically under-represented in the legislative branch. In one case, Washington D.C. they are hardly represented at all. And for many, on the right, this is indeed a feature when they claim that the country was never intended to be a democracy in the first place, but merely a republic.
Dismantling, removing, eliminating etc. is exactly what they want to do. They don’t run for office to further government and its programs, they run to shut it down, to obstruct whatever good may come out of government programs, and the teabags hold such a perverse view of what government should do and what their priorities are (illegal aliens are a bigger threat to US security than foreign actors as an example) that national security is put on the line. The division and lack of cooperation between the chambers is, as an IT guy might say, a feature not a bug.
I don’t argue that that is their intent. But, objectively speaking, they’ve failed to achieve their goal. Not only is the social safety net intact, but a major new one, universal health care, was added in recent times. Regulation of industry has not diminished overall-it’s decreased in some areas and increased in others. Now it is true that income and wealth disparity have increased, but my view is that that is principally structural in nature, since it’s been seen in just about every country, including Scandinavia (their overall inequality is much lower, but the % increase in the last 10 years has been similar). So, since the current strategy is not getting the Republicans to their goal, they might want to consider a different one.
The administration has told Congress very clearly that there is no backup plan if SCOTUS should dismantle any parts on ACA particularly subsidies. So, while health care may have become the law and signed by the Congress, too many members see it as their role to destroy it. As to the social safety net, if it were not for a Democrat being in the White House who now has a new veto pen, the Rs would shred it by advancing legislation and not providing any alternatives for those at poverty levels except what could be obtained by buying it privately.
House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY), " when us leaders may be silent."
Well, I hope Hal and them there leaders get them their act together, cause us peeple is getting pissed off at them.
I am tempted to say that this is what happens when a political party takes its marching orders from Talk Radio and Fox News.
The truth is deeper. Several factors have come together to render the house impossible. First, Gingrich essentially focused all power on the speaker over committee chairs. There is little reason for a house member to work to develop his own power base within a committee. Second the house’s rejection of ear marks means members don’t have to be concerned about delivering the goods to their local districts. When tied to the end of competitive seats due to gerrymandering, and the nationalization of campaign financing of local politics by Citizen’s United house members are completely disconnected from their local voters. Today the house functions like a parliament with little rump parties within the Republican party combining to create a working majority but without control of the executive absolutely necessary for any parliament. The parties have every incentive not to work together. The result is gridlock. Where it ends is with some future President completely ignoring and perhaps disbanding the Congress. That will mean civil war and the death of millions.
Just keep in mind that Newt Gingrich and John Roberts started this ball rolling down hill. The media played along with all the stories about ear marks wasting government money. I hope in the end the proper balance is restored but I wouldn’t count on it. Nothing much good can happen as long as money makes some citizens more equal than others.
This is nothing but a game the GoP are playing. Sadly they are losing their own war and are now getting ready for a bloody battle between the Senate GoPers vs the House GoPers. Too bad our fore fathers did not foresee this type of debacle ever occurring and thus, providing a legal provision around it
Yes…once…maybe twice. But with Scalise and to a lesser degree McCarthy as his cohorts in House leadership he has zero ability to survive the ensuing rebellion. Shoot, they will be leading the charge to have him removed. Boehner sold what pitiful little power he had left to become nothing more but a figurehead this time around.
What’s even worse, is they are using Boehner as their fall guy. He takes the majority of the hit everytime one of of their insane ideas doesn’t pan out…like this one. The only upside I can see for him is he doesn’t have to go through the hassle of getting new business cards that don’t include “Speaker of the House”.
Of course, he does still have that totally awesome lawsuit waiting in the wings to deal with Obama’s EO on immigration. I mean, he totally wasn’t blowing smoke up our collective butts about that, right??
