The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the only officer of Congress mentioned in the Constitution, other than another temporary officer of the Senate who presides when the Vice President is unable to do so. The role of the speaker of the House of Representatives is not defined, but it certainly includes passing laws that keep the federal government running. But Kevin McCarthy, the current president, isn’t doing that job. In fact, at this point, it’s hard to see how he can pass a bill that maintains federal funding, let alone one that the Democratic-controlled Senate passes. So it looks like we’re headed for a federal shutdown at the end of this month, with many key government activities suspended until further notice.
Because? McCarthy is a weak leader, especially compared to Nancy Pelosi, his formidable predecessor. But even a wonderful leader would certainly not be able to understand the dynamics of a party that has been extremist for a generation but has now moved beyond extremism and borders on nihilism.
And yes, it’s a Republican problem. Any narrative about dysfunction or “partisanship” of “Congress” simply misinforms the public. Crises like the one McCarthy is now facing did not occur under Pelosi, even though she also had a very narrow majority.
I will come back to this difference. But first, let me make another comparison: between the upcoming shutdown in 2023 and the shutdowns of 1995-96, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
If you had told me then that I would one day hold up Gingrich as a model of rationality, I would not have believed you. But be careful.
Although Gingrich’s tactics—his penchant for using blackmail as a political strategy—were new and dangerous in 1995, he had a real political goal: He wanted to impose significant cuts in federal spending.
Plus, Gingrich was trying to get to where the money was. The federal government is an insurance company with an army: most nonmilitary spending goes to the major safety-net programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And Gingrich actually wanted to make deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
This failed, and the government’s role in promoting health insurance coverage ultimately expanded significantly, although Medicare was surprisingly successful in containing costs. Still, Gingrich’s goals were at least coherent.
In his desperate efforts to appease his party’s hardliners, McCarthy has acted as if their refusal to approve federal funding was a Gingrich-like demand to reduce federal spending. He tried to pass a permanent resolution — a bill that would temporarily keep the money flowing — that included deep cuts to some parts of the federal government.
However, three aspects are worth highlighting in this attempt. First, even if he had passed this resolution, it would have died once it reached the Senate. Second, unlike Gingrich, McCarthy tried to go where there is no money by cutting nonmilitary discretionary spending, which makes up a relatively small portion of the federal budget. It’s also a spending category that has been the subject of austerity for more than a decade, since President Barack Obama made concessions to Republicans during the debt ceiling standoff in 2011. You simply can’t get water out of this stone.
After all, even this extreme proposal wasn’t extreme enough for die-hard Republicans. I liked what one congressman told Politico: “Some of these people would vote against the Bible because there isn’t enough Jesus in it.” The point is that the right wing of the party has no real interest in government; It’s all posturing and the budget dispute is more of a tantrum than a political dispute.
If the Republican Party were anything like a normal party, McCarthy would forego the right, gather the most sensible Republican representatives – it would be misleading to call them “moderates” – and make a deal with the Democrats. But that would almost certainly cost him the presidency, and in general, more or less the entire Republican Party is afraid of hardliners, so the party’s positions are ultimately dictated by its most extreme faction.
As I said, this is all very different than what’s happening on the other side of the aisle. Sometimes you still see analyzes that treat left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans as if they were the same, but they are not similar. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is actually interested in politics; She tries to push the party leadership in her direction, but is willing to take whatever she can get. That’s why Pelosi, who had a narrow majority in Biden’s first two years in office, managed to pass historic legislation on infrastructure, climate and technology, while McCarthy couldn’t even keep the government running.
Now, a prolonged shutdown would be very damaging, and if past clashes were anything to go by, the public would blame Republicans, which caused Gingrich to back down in the 1990s. But it’s not clear whether McCarthy, or whoever replaces him if he is ousted, will be willing or even able to reach a deal that reopens the government. How does this end?
Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. © The New York Times, 2023. Translation of news clips
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