Not this time. The roles have been reversed between the two parties as Congress barrels toward a government shutdown on Oct. 1 with no obvious off-ramp in sight.
It’s Republicans who are pushing a “clean” seven-week continuing resolution, which they say will buy time for more negotiations on full-year spending bills and possibly an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. Democrats, meanwhile, wrote an alternative four-week punt that tacks on a laundry list of other demands, including a permanent extension of the insurance subsidies.
Conservative Republicans who have balked at past stopgaps have signed on to their party’s strategy, as have Democrats who have traditionally been most loath to flirt with shutdowns — such as the Washington-area members who represent federal workers who stand to be furloughed
My brain’s falling out of my head,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) said in an interview. ”When you talk about the Freedom Caucus talking about passing a CR and the Democrats saying, ‘I’m going to shut down the government.’ I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
There are myriad reasons for the current moment’s Bizarro World politics, but the biggest is a transformation of incentives. Where Republicans have spent most of the past 15 years heeding the wishes of a party base spoiling for a fight, damn the consequences, it’s now Democrats in that position. The GOP, meanwhile, is in lockstep behind President Donald Trump, who is determined to corner his opposition.
The current situation, in fact, is a nearly precise inversion of the standoff seen in the fall of 2013, when conservative Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sparked a shutdown over a demand to reverse Democrats’ signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act. They backed down after 17 days.
“It did not work for them,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) recalled last week as he reflected on how Democrats are now seeking a reversal of parts of the GOP’s own signature legislation — health care provisions in the domestic policy bill the party passed in July. Democrats also want to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies that expire at the end of this year.
They tied something unrelated to spending, Obamacare, and shut down the government,” Cole added. “That was the wrong thing to do then. … You are doing the same thing now. It’s nothing else.”