The song was You can't always get what you want. However, the GOP has gotten what it wants and now seems not to want it. Reid and the Senate Democrats committed to regular order this morning, requesting a conference call between the Senate and the GOP House to begin trying to iron out differences between their radically different budgets.
After spending 2 years claiming that the main hurdle for getting something done on the fiscal side in Washington was the failure of Senate Dems to come up with a budget for 4 years, the GOP has it's Senate Dem budget so what are they doing with it? Yep, their blocking it.
Really why should this be surprising? The only real question was which poison would they use? Will the House just not offer a deal or will the Senate take the pressure off by not even allowing a conference call? As it turns out, it's the latter:
"The GOP isn't reversing its 180 on returning to "regular order" in the budget process.
"And they'll make that point primarily in the Republican-aligned partisan press, where they'll rarely get any pushback on it. Remember, the "four years" of not passing a "budget" included the time after the Budget Control Act was passed, which in addition to being far more important than a budget resolution (the BCA was law; budget resolutions are not) actually did have the word "Budget" right there in the title. But that didn't stop the talking point, any more than some Republicans refrained from making those hilarious teleprompter jokes even when they were, themselves, reading those jokes off of a teleprompter."
"Generally, I continue to not be a big fan of the "if we do this then they won't be able to say that" line of reasoning. It can work, but usually? Not really. Especially in cases such as this in which we're talking about rhetoric that's mainly aimed at one's own strong supporters in order to give them something to feel aggrieved about."
After spending 2 years claiming that the main hurdle for getting something done on the fiscal side in Washington was the failure of Senate Dems to come up with a budget for 4 years, the GOP has it's Senate Dem budget so what are they doing with it? Yep, their blocking it.
Really why should this be surprising? The only real question was which poison would they use? Will the House just not offer a deal or will the Senate take the pressure off by not even allowing a conference call? As it turns out, it's the latter:
"The GOP isn't reversing its 180 on returning to "regular order" in the budget process.
On the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to appoint seven Democratic and five Republican Senate negotiators to a conference committee with House counterparts, to iron out major differences between the two chambers' budgets."
"Now that both bodies have passed budgets, convening a conference committee is the next step in "regular order," which Republicans have insisted on returning to for several months.
But speaking on behalf of Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) objected to Reid's request."
Ezra Klein and Soltas write a good piece about this too.
"For the last two years, congressional Republicans have argued that the real problem in the budget debate is that Democrats have abandoned “regular order.” By regular order, Republicans mean — well, I’ll let Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, explain it."
“Secret deals have not worked and are an affront to popular democracy,” he argued in January. “The right process is the regular order. The House produces its budget–as it has–and the Senate passes its budget, all in accordance with the Budget Act of 1974. Under that law, the Senate Budget Committee must approve a budget resolution by April 1st. From there, the law requires the budget to be considered on the Senate floor where it must receive 50 hours of open amendment and debate. A budget cannot be filibustered and is adopted by a simple majority in both committee and the full Senate. Then, once the issues and differences are clarified by this open process, the work of conferencing must begin.”
"Got that? The House should pass a budget, the Senate should pass a budget, and then the two chambers should head to conference to work out the differences between the two budgets — all of it out in the open. No more of these backroom negotiations. Let Congress work as Congress was intended to work."
But a funny thing happened after Senate Democrats passed their budget: House Republicans, it seemed, weren’t that eager to move to regular order after all. There’s been no evident interest in the next move, which is appointing conferees to begin reconciling the two budgets. “It seems to us they want to slow this down, keep it in the back rooms, keep it quiet, because there’s no advantage to them in having a formal public process,” said one Democratic aide.
In fact, Republicans see a disadvantage in a formal public process. “If you appoint conferees and after 20 legislative days there’s no agreement, the minority has the right to offer motions to instruct, which become politically motivated bombs that show up on the House floor,” Boehner told reporters.
Now they are asking for-get this, a secret, backroom deal.
"House Republicans instead want a private agreement — a “framework” — that would direct the conference committee as they attempt to reconcile the budgets. “What we want to do is have constructive dialogues to find out where the common ground is and go to conference when we have a realistic chance of coming out with an agreement,” Ryan told reporters. There’s precedent for this sort of thing. But it’s not what’s traditionally meant by “regular order.” Rather, it’s a return to the precise kind of backroom, leadership-driven dealmaking Republicans have spent so much time assailing."
All this hand-wringing over regular order was nothing ever but political theater, anyway. All a budget actually does is state priorities-it's a kind of wish list. It doesn't have the force of law.
I note, however, that Jon Bernstein think Soltas and Klein are too optimistic about the GOP being called out here:
"Today's Wonkbook (from Evan Soltas and Ezra Klein) tells the story of the Republican reluctance to go to conference on the budget, and concludes:
And Senate Democrats aren’t having it. After years of Republicans complaining about secret deals and hammering Senate Democrats for betraying regular order, they’re calling the GOP’s bluff. That’s why Reid intends to move towards conference this morning. Either Republicans will agree, and regular order will proceed — which will likely mean no deal, and which will then give House Democrats a chance to throw their bombs — or Senate Republicans will filibuster, and that will be the end of the regular order talking point."My prediction: no, it won't be the end of that talking point. We'll still see Republicans claiming that Democrats are irresponsible on the budget because the Senate didn't pass a budget resolution for four years."
"And they'll make that point primarily in the Republican-aligned partisan press, where they'll rarely get any pushback on it. Remember, the "four years" of not passing a "budget" included the time after the Budget Control Act was passed, which in addition to being far more important than a budget resolution (the BCA was law; budget resolutions are not) actually did have the word "Budget" right there in the title. But that didn't stop the talking point, any more than some Republicans refrained from making those hilarious teleprompter jokes even when they were, themselves, reading those jokes off of a teleprompter."
"Generally, I continue to not be a big fan of the "if we do this then they won't be able to say that" line of reasoning. It can work, but usually? Not really. Especially in cases such as this in which we're talking about rhetoric that's mainly aimed at one's own strong supporters in order to give them something to feel aggrieved about."
I'm not sure I agree with Bernstein here. His argument seems to amount to this: the GOP is so dishonest that they'll win the argument anyway. If this were true how do you explain the 2012 election where Romney-Ryan applied the entire GOP arsenal of dirty tricks-direct likes. distortions. lies of omission, downright slander. etc.-and still came up so short?
I tend to agree he's right the GOPer's particularly when talking to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh will continue to use this particular phony talking point. In the larger universe, they've been called out. If we measure success by what the Right wing media says we'd give up.
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