The outline of the spending agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cut with Democratic leaders sounds bad on its face. But the underlying reasons for that agreement seem far worse.
As I wrote last week, “Speaker Johnson and Republican ‘leadership’ … bailed the Democrats out of the predicament they put themselves in last May.” To which I should make an important addition: In many ways, Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he did his own Republican members. Because most Republicans don’t want to reduce spending — and they don’t want their constituents to know that either.
Dynamics of a ‘Shutdown Showdown‘
Consider the conventional wisdom regarding so-called “government shutdowns.” (They’re so-called because the essential functions of government continue when Congress hasn’t passed appropriations legislation, but set the semantics aside temporarily.) Conventional wisdom in Washington holds that the party seen as initiating the “shutdown” will bear the political responsibility/blame for the impasse.
For instance, conservatives have in recent weeks coined the slogan, “shut down the border or shut down the government,” demanding an end to the Biden administration’s immigration fecklessness as part of any spending agreement. But under this scenario, conservatives would be seen as initiating this “shutdown,” by insisting on immigration policy changes as part of any spending agreement. Establishment types therefore have gotten nervous about this possibility, assuming that the media would “blame” Republicans for any “shutdown.”
But when it comes to spending, last spring’s debt limit deal flipped the dynamics on
