Like self-loathing adrenaline junkies, members of Congress live on the brink while claiming not to like it.
Witness the repeated professions of hate for “brinkmanship” by members of both parties as they waltz toward the precipice. But there’s little reason to believe governing by crisis will end anytime soon.
This month, lawmakers and President Barack Obama careened over the brink and into a 16-day partial government shutdown, then were forced to reach a deal by the specter of a default on federal obligations.
The deal, of course, sets up another set of deadlines: Jan. 15 when government funding expires and Feb. 7 for the debt ceiling, though the Treasury Department could use “extraordinary measures” to extend the debt deadline.
The divided government has lived this way since we elected it in 2011, with the near-shutdown of April 2011, followed by the August 2011 almost-breach of the debt ceiling, the New Year’s “fiscal cliff” deal and this month’s shutdown.
It makes Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, wistful for the must-pass deadlines of yore: Congressional recess, when “jet fumes” are the most powerful motivators. No economic damage wrought by bumping up against those.
Isakson hopes this deadline-buster was bad enough – rating agency Standard & Poor’s estimates the country lost $24 billion of economic activity in the shutdown – to rattle people into shape.
“Maybe the shutdown, which I didn’t think was a good idea, was so much poison that it will put some pressure on people to do our jobs,” Isakson said.
Georgia’s junior senator has been critical of the tactic pushed by his colleague Ted Cruz and conservatives in the U.S. House to attach funding of the new health care law to the threat of a shutdown.
The 11th-hour deal gained virtually nothing for Republicans legislatively, though Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger said there was a victory in showing the public that Republicans really, really don’t like the law known as Obamacare.
“It is clear to the American people who wants to protect them from the law — the Republican Party — and who does not — the president and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid,” Graves said.
Despite vowing to carry on the fight, Graves said he – like those from all corners of Congress – is eager to return to the budgeting process known as regular order. It’s been 19 years since both chambers approved each of the 12 appropriations bills covering all corners of the government and merged them by the Sept. 30 statutory deadline.
Stopgap “continuing resolutions,” like the one approved Wednesday, have become the common way of budgeting.
Steve Bell, of the Bipartisan Policy Committee, a former Senate Budget Committee staff director, credited crisis legislating to U.S. House members who represent gerrymandered safe districts and have only a primary election to fear. Those folks have no incentive to compromise and thus are more willing to use leverage points such as shutdowns and debt caps to get what they want.
“Until one party controls both sides (of Congress) and the White House, I don’t see how you will ever get regular order established again,” Bell said.
Bell said the hyperpartisanship escalated under President George W. Bush, who was demonized by Democrats as Republicans demonize President Barack Obama.
But Rep. David Scott, an Atlanta Democrat, has fond memories of Congressional relations in the Bush years. When he first arrived in Washington in 2003, he recalled, there was a House retreat to the Virginia mountains in which Democrats and Republicans got relaxed time together.
“You go by train, you got to spend time with one another,” Scott said. “God, you can’t have that now. We hardly talk.”
