Our thoughts and opinions are with you
(Dan here…..lifted from an e-mail via iphone and I am tossing it out to the fray)
by new deal democrat
A few thoughts, hopefully from 30,000 feet, about the shutdown:
1. It looks like Schumer is getting rolled again. The reason the Bush tax cuts became permanent, even when the Dems held almost all the cards at the end of 2012, is that Obama failed to take a vacation to Hawaii and come back January 2 to negotiate from the new, more favorable status quo, but even more importantly because Schumer offered McConnell a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts if the GOP would agree to sequestration, thinking McConnell would never take the deal. Since the GOP holds tax cuts for billionaires sacred, though, McConnell took the deal (realizing he could roll Dems on the Pentagon spending cuts later). That fact alone should have made Dems realize they didn’t want Schumer as their dealmaker.
2. Never show weakness to a dishonest negotiator. We all know Trump always welches on deals. This is now the third time he has done so with Dems on the issue of the Dreamers. Reagan’s negotiator, Jim Baker’s mantra was “nothing is decided until everything is decided.” Once Trump went back on his word the first time, it should have been made clear that all Dem concessions were off the table. Even if they decided to give Trump a second chance, once he welched on Durbin and Graham a week ago, Schumer should never have offered any further concessions. With a dishonest negotiator, that just leads to a dynamic of “Jump Higher! HIGHER!!!” as s/he coerces maximum capitulation. A dishonest negotiator must be told that they must come back to the bargaining table with a concession before talks can resume.
3. It turns out the GOP didn’t even have 50 votes of their own. Under those circumstances, I wonder if the Dems should have switched their votes to “ayes” on the cloture motion. Let the bill itself come to a vote and fail, based entirely on the GOP’s inability to get to 50. Then it’s clear that the blame rests with the GOP.
4. Both of the last two welches have been orchestrated, it appears, by General Kelly. Once the Dems leave the room, he gets the last word, and changes Trump’s mind. In this latest round, going back to the dishonest negotiator rubric, what happened is that Schumer capitulated on point A (funding for the wall), and now Trump and Kelly have moved backward, from Z to Z+ — a whole host of new conditions.
5. Use the President’s Room. How do you keep Trump at his word, and cut Kelly out of the loop? There is a little-known room in the Capital called “The President’s Room,” designed to be used by the Chief Executive when he is doing business with the Congress. Woodrow Wilson used it to great effect during his first term in order to get progressive economic legislation passed, meeting with legislators there almost weekly.
Not just the Dems, but even the GOP, should invite Trump to make use of the President’s Room, selling it to him with glitz and glamour and obsequious praise. Once Trump agrees to a deal, the measure can be voted on immediately in the same building while members who aren’t needed on the floor babysit Trump and prevent Kelly and others from reneging. He can even sign the passed bill right there on the spot.
6. If this impasse isn’t resolved quickly, I don’t think it is going to end well for Democrats. That’s because there are about 10 times the number of kids who are on CHIP vs. Dreamers. The worst that could happen to a Dreamer is, they get deported (and maybe can come back effective January 21, 2021), and enforcement doesn’t have to necessarily occur. But the kids on CHIP need medical care, and some of them need it *NOW* to avoid permanent injuries or even death, and the program is on the verge of running out of $$$. Having horror stories of CHIP kids going without care is going to crush the Dems. If we are heading that way, then Dems have no choice but to capitulate as cleanly as possible first.
Sent from my iPad
How do Democratic Party members get the blame when only 45 of the GOP voted for the thing? Kinda hard to blame the other party if not all of your members vote for what your pushing, that is unless the MSM comes out in force to convince the voting public that Dems are to blame that is.
“Having horror stories of CHIP kids going without care is going to crush the Dems.”
Uh, no. It’s going to crush the GOP, which is already staring at a November bloodbath. The GOP controls both houses of Congress and the Executive. Trump was elected as the master of “the art of the deal.” Turns out the only deals Trump signs are “deals” where Democrats are powerless. Now they aren’t, and Trump can’t deal. The American people will blame the GOP obstructionists.
Ignore Trump as a negotiating partner or essentially take him at his word that he’ll sign anything.
Negotiate with the Republican leadership, get a bill passed, and let Republicans deal with Trump’s antics.
Trump is a nonentity as a negotiating partner – he doesn’t understand policy, he doesn’t know procedure, he’s susceptible to waffling based on the last person he spoke with.
Trump simply is not normal and legislators should recognize that.
As far CHIP goes, Ryan has had several months to address that and completely ignored it. That should be the first point of every Democrat’s mouth should a deal not be reached.
Offer a clean stand alone bill extending CHIP under the argument that children’s health should not be a bargaining chip and no one should be subjected to the demagoguery that tries to make children’s health a hostage.
As far as the 2001-2003 tax breaks, 20% repealed. The 20% impacted the >than $500,000 annually who received most of the income tax relief. The Trump tax relief bill remedied that and doubled the amount going to 1% of the Household Taxpayers.
Was New Deal Democrat a debater in high school or college?
Thorton:
Does it matter and is there a non sequitur coming ?
The R’s not passing the CHIP extension & DACA much earlier was the political leverage they used to get D’s to accept border wall funding, and other draconian (from D’s point of view) measures to restrict immigration mostly to keep non-whites and non-Christians out with more ICE funding to round up illegals and deport them.
So the R’s did politics as leverage which is standard practice for either party… business as usual.
But leverage has to have force behind it and it can’t if the opposition won’t budge. Or stated differently, leverage without sufficient force moves nothing.
In such cases movement toward the D’s demands have to come from the R’s. And since the R’s control both Houses and the Executive they clearly have all the cards they need and all the power to meet D’s demands in the Senate.
Thus the current dilemma faced by the R’s is whether they will gain or lose more seats in either chamber in the Nov mid-terms by not moving toward the D’s demands
One can say the same for the D’s but there’s a difference.
The public at large overwhelmingly want CHIP funded NOW, AND a solid 2/3’s of the public at large want the Dreamers to stay without conditions.
Because the public wants both CHIP and DACA and the D’s are the party which supports the public on these items, the R’s party is at risk with the Nov mid-terms… they are more exposed than the D’s.
In all past R’s designed brinksmanship manipulated gov’t shut-downs they have lost public favor on the whole, even if they gain favor among the far right extremists.
At present, with an extremist racist R President on their side, but who has the lowest approval rating of any President in their first year since before Truman, the R’s are on thin ice already heading toward the midterms later this year.
What most of the public will remember clearly is that the R’s had all three houses and the executive in their control but shut -down gov’t as a political tool by using two of the public’s favored programs (CHIP & DACA) as leverage for far right wing objectives… and thus wasted time and money and put CHIP kids at risk.
The longer the shut-down goes no the worse it will be in Nov for the R’s — and while they put on a good show for their racist base ,they know full well they’re screwed by holding firm and using CHIP and DACA as leverage.
All they’re doing is hoping the D’s will fold..
The most interesting thing here is that the party with the majority of all branches of gov’t can’t govern with a minority opposition. An amazing demonstration of a lack of both leadership and ability.
Also a pretty clear demonstration that the R’s are actually two minority parties.. a coalition of extremists and moderates.
The Republicans who voted no on cloture were free to do so because they knew the vote would fail. If the Democrats had voted for cloture as you suggest in #3, the bill would have only needed 51 votes to pass. Five Democrats were already on record in favor of passage, totaling 50 votes in favor. Pence would have delayed his Mideast trip, and the Democrats would have come away with nothing.
RW:
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Wow.
#1 is confusing.
#2 and #4 are concerning trump, which is silly since he will sign anything Reps allow him to sign.
#3 is batshit crazy. You take away the filibuster and II can guarantee you the GOP will easily pass legislation they want.
#5 is not quite as much batshit as #3, but it is close. What, you think the RE mantra of “location, location, location” has any effect whatsoever on this process?
#6 I stopped when I read “The worst that could happen to a Dreamer is, they get deported”.
This who will win and who will lose thing is silly. It is not going to change anyone’s vote, it may increase or decrease turnout.
There surely is information that the public doesn’t have. Still it seems like a fairly pointless exercise to filibuster this. Republicans look to not have the votes to pass it. That is a much more powerful result than a filibuster with 41 or more Democrats Now the Republicans have more options than to simply go back to the House and start again. They could do what President Obama did and wait and I do not think their base will get very agitated by that. They will hammer on how nice the economy is humming along due to that tax cut and few are going to become economic experts to worry whether that is strictly the case and they will also hammer that Democrats would rather shutdown the government than work legislation on immigration. And that is the truth really so it will get traction if the shutdown starts to molest people. If Republicans were smart (and they aren’t very often) they might force a talking filibuster and also turn to passing some immigration bill that has DACA-like treatment of Dreamers plus wall and other measures in the House and send it to the Senate. Having Senate Democrats simultaneously filibuster the CR and an immigration bill would be a spectacle. And particularly when Republicans can barely agree on anything. Even their tax “reform” barely found a way through.
geez
Umm, guys?
If not for the restrictions on budget reconciliation deals, and the filibuster, the ACA would have been killed shortly after the inauguration.
Why, when Reps could not get the votes to kill most of it? Cause the limitations imposed on reconciliation bills stopped Reps from making different deals to get to 50.
That is the same thing that is happening here. If they closed debate, Reps would start the deal making and get to 50 without any Dem input.
We really, really need to start teaching civics again.
This is almost exactly the
EM:
You could still do Reconciliation in this scenario. Not creating a deficit 10 years out and living with it, is wise. The Dems had the majority in 2008 and could have passed any other healthcare law provided it did not create a deficit (if you want to have such a clause).
Is it possible that Democrats are not interested in a Dreamer fix prior to November’s election? There are ways to get it that I think satisfy at least the public stances of most members of both parties. Senate Democrats could pledge no filibusters on immigration bills for the remainder of this Congress provided a DACA-like stand-alone gets a final votes in the House and Senate and gets signed by Trump if passed. That I think is the major public objection that Republicans have that their majority will not get an up or down vote on other immigration matters if DACA is stand-alone. Since DACA almost certainly has the most support, it would be the surest law change to happen. If other changes can also get the House, Senate and Trump approvals, it is not exactly a catastrophe that legislators legislate.
The filibuster is fundamentally undemocratic in a body that is already constructed undemocratically. The filibuster is an accident of history that has weaponized in the last twenty years.
Yes, in particular circumstances it seems like a firewall but ultimately it does far more damage than good.
What would the ACA have looked like if the Democrats hadn’t had to operate and negotiate under filibuster rules (yes, I know they ultimately used reconciliation for final passage but the bill was constructed under the assumption of needing 60 votes)?
Would Republicans have been more inclined to participate in the negotiations if they knew 51 votes were sufficient?
Would Joe Lieberman have been able to wield veto power over a public option if his vote wasn’t essential?
Would the subsequent opposition to ACA played out the same way – a bill that only required 51 votes would have likely been much less of a Rube Goldberg construction, much easier to administer and much easier to defend.
The presence of the filibuster allows for more rigid ideological partisanship because ultimately the majority is protected from doing something stupid by being able to blame the other side for being obstructionist. The majority becomes like the drunk in the bar who insists his friends hold him back from the fight.
In the present circumstance the absence of the filibuster would likely result in some pretty bad outcomes but I wonder if making the Republicans pay the ultimate political cost should they simply charge ahead wouldn’t have some tempering influence. Absent the filibuster would some of the Republicans like Graham, Flake, and Rubio who are more moderate in immigration have second thoughts about charging ahead?
I don’t dismiss the human outcomes if the Republicans get their way here but the fact remains that those bad outcomes remain in play filibuster or not. Make the Republicans govern which also implies they pay the consequences for how and what they do. Let them take full ownership for their racist and destructive policies.
As it stands Congress is a wholly dysfunctional body. Whatever benefits the filibuster may have had, and it should be noted they were never as clear as the fictional Mr. Smith Goes to Washington scenario implies, it now acts less as a protection against bad policy than an excuse to be rigid and radical.
Mark:
Now you are beginning to see it. The filibuster was never meant to be. Aaron Burr suggested the “previous question ” rule was not needed and the Senate eliminated it. The previous question motion was put in place to prevent a filibuster by a minority. Now a little history:
“Our Founders were deeply read in classical history, and they had good reason to fear the consequences of a legislature addicted to minority rule,” they said. “As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 22, ‘If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority…[the government’s] situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.’”
Ironically, Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s long-time rival, has gotten some credit as the father of the American filibuster. Political scientist Sarah Binder testified before the Senate in 2010 about how Vice President Burr told the Senate in 1805 that it should eliminate a rule that automatically cut off floor debate, called the previous question motion, because he thought it wasn’t needed.
“So when Aaron Burr said ‘get rid of the previous question motion,’ the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book,” she said. It was then-Senator John Quincy Adams who reminded his colleagues of Burr’s suggestion.”
The previous question motion was intended to stop senators who stood in the way of a vote ending debate on whatever they were talking about and move to the next topic. It required a majority vote and was intent on preventing a minority from holding captive a majority.
Add to the filibuster the Hastert majority of the majority rule.
Eric,
Try not to talk.
Run,
You could not create the ACA via budget reconciliation. Bits and pieces of it? Sure. Not policy changes.
EM:
I did not say you could.
“The filibuster is an accident of history that has weaponized in the last twenty years.” per Jamison
If that’s true then the Revolution was an accident of history, winning it was an accident of history, the constitution was an accident of history.
The filibuster has been used since 1841… and the only reason it isn’t still used in the House is because he body of members is too large.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm
And just btw, Cato used the fillibuster more than once beginning in 60 BC Rome. It has always been a political tool used by the opposition in a deliberative body..
“The filibuster is an accident of history that has weaponized in the last twenty years.” Small quibble here. It’s been nine years, not twenty. Before the Republican announcement in December, 2008, and then Barak Obama’s inauguration in January, 2009, the filibuster was rarely used. After the Republicans both started enforcing unanimity and dedicated themselves to blocking any possible achievement by the Democrats it was used for any vote, no matter how trivial.
Filibusters have been growing in popularity for more than nine years. Here are the numbers o motions to stop a filibuster:
If the goal is to get a “clean” Dreamer bill of some type then backing off of filibuster may be a way to get it. If getting a “clean” Dreamer bill is unimportant, then no need to back off filibuster. I look at the House and Senate majorities and suspect that if the filibuster on the rest of the stuff was given up in exchange for a the “clean” bill that the rest of the stuff would have a really hard time getting passed if Democrats vote no to it all. If the House can find a bill or bills that get the Republican caucus so united that it passes, and can also then find 50 of 51 Republican Senators, then hats off to them. Without a filibuster there is a better chance that the only immigration legislation this year is Dreamer.
1. Democrats are not strategists in the large sense. They approach negotiations with innocence as if Repubs really want to work out a solution when they really want capitulation.
2. I agree. State your case and then silence. It is their turn to agree, not, agree, and state their case. Usually the first to talk is the one who will capitulate afterwards.
3. Not knowing what you opponent is up to is a weakness. Not recognizing it afterwards is stupid. The Repubs must get their House in order in order to have the power.
4. Slam Kelly if you have to do so.
5. Separating Trump from his Svengali makes sense; but, I doubt it will happen. I doubt Ryan or McConnell will capitulate.
6. This is Sophie’s choice. Kids need medical attention and sending kids back to a country that they are not familiar with is not a solution. Either way Dems lose. CHIPs has been an issue since last Fall as well as DACA last year. Repubs have concentrated on the ACA most of last year in spite of the needs of the country, children in need of healthcare, and children without a haven. If anything, take it to the media. This is just as important as sexual harassment and “Me Too.” Play the card which will force people to recognize the Republicans are willing to sacrifice children for their own political gain. Then if these stories come out on kids without healthcare, the Repubs can hold it.
#6
We need a rewrite.
EM:
More than likely many of the children bounced out of CHIPS would be picked up by Medicaid or the ACA.
Filibuster was just difficult an approach to rely on but the activist base of the party (both, really) thinks it is a wonderful too because it is real obvious at the top level that you really, really want X or don’t want Y. The “don’t want Y” tends to work smoother but this was a “want X”.