Note: This column is NOT being issued pursuant to a federal court order.
In his first few months commanding the majority, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, has expressed eternal gratitude toward himself for allegedly altering the culture in the upper chamber, although the evidence for such constitutes weak tea and carries with it a claim by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that he, Mitch McConnell is, in Cruz’s words, a liar.
McConnell has, in fact, skipped through the first nine months of the 114th Congress by failing to reach any of his party’s conservative goals, a situation that has attracted the enmity of his right-wing critics. Obamacare remains on the books. The Environmental Protection Agency is still trying to save the planet. The Iran treaty will be implemented and Planned Parenthood continues to provide health services to millions of women in need.
It’s the latter that may ultimately prove McConnell’s Dien Bien Phu. The federal budget year ends in less than two weeks, on Sept. 30, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that both the House and Senate will approve, and President Obama will sign, the 12 appropriations measures funding the government, necessitating a continuing resolution to keep the doors open while matters get worked out.
It should be remembered at this point that McConnell has vowed over and over again that there will not be a government shutdown on his watch, even hauling out an old Larry Forgy line that there’s no lesson to be learned from the second kick of a mule – recalling the political damage that befell Republicans in previous stoppages.
The only problem is McConnell, no stranger to hubris, can do little more to stop a second shutdown in three years than a man standing in the middle of the tracks can do to stop a runaway train. Getting the votes necessary to approve a stopgap, and therefore continue governmental operations, isn’t going to prove easy.
McConnell may get the job done in the Senate as long as he, like Blanche DuBois, depends on the kindness of strangers. While the likes of Cruz and his new BFF Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, probably will oppose any continuing resolution he’ll likely attract enough votes, with the help of Democrats, to plod forward.
There’s more than just a bit of irony involved here since McConnell proudly stood in the way of just about everything the Democrats tried to accomplish while they held the majority. Regardless, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has agreed to do his part.
“I agree that any budget deal must be clean, that is, no riders, nothing with Planned Parenthood, nothing with repealing what the Environmental Protection Agency has done, no repealing another Wall Street meltdown, no riders dealing with immigration,” Reid said. “Just a clean continuing resolution for a short period of time to allow us to do a more, full, more complete deal in the very near future.”
But even that helping hand might not prove sufficient. The House is a different animal altogether and there exists a significant segment of the Republican caucus that really doesn’t much care if the government shuts down.
Planned Parenthood provides a convenient scapegoat in wake of a sting operation by a virulent anti-abortion group that produced video purportedly showing representatives from the organization seeking to profit from dealing fetus tissue to labs – something the video utterly fails to establish, but then truth rarely matters when it comes to the abortion debate.
Regardless, more than 30 House Republicans – including Ol’ Reliable, Rep. Thomas Massie, another Kentucky Republican, who is on record as saying a government shutdown is no big deal – maintain they will oppose any budget deal, stopgap or otherwise, that provides funds to Planned Parenthood.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other members of the GOP leadership can only afford to lose a maximum of 28 Republicans on a spending bill if every Democrat lines up in opposition. And Democrats would be expected to oppose any spending bill that defunds Planned Parenthood. Obama certainly would veto legislation that kills funding.
All that places Boehner in a pickle. In the past he has been guided by the so-called Hastert rule – offering up legislation for a vote only if it has sufficient Republican support for passage. In this instance he can produce a stopgap that defunds Planned Parenthood, thus sending a budget measure to the Senate that will not pass muster, leading to a shutdown, or he can offer a bill that doesn’t have an impact on the organization, violating the Hastert rule and further alienating a conservative wing that already has filed legislation seeking to oust him from his leadership position.
At any rate there’s little McConnell can do but stand on the sidelines and, like everyone else, see how our little drama plays out. As of Sept. 17, the House is scheduled to convene for only five days before the end of the fiscal year and the funding comes to a halt.
Here’s betting that Boehner, derisively characterized by the conservatives as an institutionalist, breaks Hastert and offers a stopgap, perhaps for three months, that funds government at current levels with no mention of Planned Parenthood in order to attract sufficient votes from Democrats and GOP moderates, a path that will undoubtedly lead to calls for his head on a platter but save McConnell’s bacon.
But the story doesn’t end here. Say the House and Senate reach some agreement and temporarily fund government operations. The chambers still will, at some point, have to develop a spending plan to fill out the remainder of the fiscal year and there’s no way that’s a done deal. Democrats and Republicans are as far apart as they possibly can be on budget priorities – including Planned Parenthood. Democrats, with strategic use of the filibuster, can deflect Republican incursions and draw howls from conservatives who nonetheless expect Republicans to achieve their goals despite the rules.
A showdown is looming, it’s just been put off for a while.
Complicating the situation further is the Republican presidential campaign, which includes four members of the Senate – Cruz, Paul, Marco Rubio, of Florida, and Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina. Each and every one will campaign against a budget that doesn’t meet their expectation, rendering a deal even more difficult to reach.
One thing you can bet on, though – McConnell will grab all the credit for avoiding a shutdown, despite observing from the bench, or blame the House for taking the issue out of his hands, even though he knew all along that closure was a possibility when he promised no shutdown. As Cruz sort of inferred, duplicity, thy name is McConnell.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.