Echoes of Government Shutdowns
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Speaker's Lobby: Echoes of Government Shutdowns
By: Chad Pergram, FOX News
Most Democrats want the government to pay for public
broadcasting.
Most Republicans want the government to sponsor NASCAR.
There. That was simple enough.
And now you know a couple of the basic differences between
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
These outcomes were as clear as day in last week's House
spending bill to fund the government through September and shave
$61 billion from the budget.
Republicans wrote the bill in a way to eliminate the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting and its $460 million budget. Rep. Ed Markey
(D-MA) crafted an amendment to restore the funding. But the House
ruled that Markey's amendment wasn't in order. So stood the
original intent of the legislation to kill government money for
public broadcasting.
Then Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) offered an amendment to strike a
program where the Pentagon spends $7 million to sponsor Sprint Cup
driver Ryan Newman.
The Army says the NASCAR sponsorship helps with recruiting. But
McCollum called the program an "absurdity." The House rejected
McCollum's amendment, 281-148, on a mostly-party line vote.
So, the legislative process worked its will. And the result
shows that the United States has a pro-NASCAR, anti-public
broadcasting House of Representatives.
A yawning chasm separates the policy priorities of Congressional
Democrats and Republicans. And you can distill those differences
into the support or opposition of government-involvement in public
broadcasting or NASCAR.
Certainly there are some Republicans who back government support
for public broadcasting. And 30 Democrats voted against taking away
the Pentagon's NASCAR money. But this is the essence of the debate
now raging in Washington as people begin whispering about a
potential "government shutdown."
Democrats have priorities they think the government should spend
its money on. Republicans do, too. And the schism over those
priorities is why the two parties are now staring into a gigantic
crevasse that divides their positions.
"We have had a very elevated week of debate about the entire
government," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal
Rogers (R-KY) on the floor last week.
It was "elevated" all right, as lawmakers duked it out about
defunding the implementation of the health care reform law or
eliminating federal support for Planned Parenthood. The "entire
government" that Rogers refers to snakes into tributaries and
streams that most Americans aren't even aware existed. But if you
want to understand the policy priorities, follow the money. That
tells you a lot about the agenda of one side or the other.
Which is why there is chatter of a potential government shutdown
unless the sides can bridge the gorge that separates them.
It's moments like these, usually centered around talk of a
"government shutdown" that helps define political movements for
years to come.
Nothing undid the "Republican Revolution" of 16 years ago as
quickly as the partial government shutdowns of late 1995 and early
1996.
For starters, it was not a "full" government shutdown. Each
year, Congress must approve 12 or 13 annual spending bills which
fund various aspects of the federal government. The House and
Senate must eventually approve the same versions of the bills and
the president must sign each piece of legislation into law.
In 1995, President Clinton signed a number of spending bills
into law, thus giving those sections of the federal government the
money and authority to operate. Mr. Clinton reached agreements with
the GOP Congress on legislation to run for the Department of
Agriculture, the Pentagon, energy and water programs, the
legislative branch (which funds Congress), the Treasury Department,
Transportation and military construction efforts.
But the president and Republicans reached a standoff when it
came to how much money (and what policy priorities should be paid
for) in bills to fund the Departments of Commerce, Justice, State,
Interior Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Veterans
Affairs. The sides waged an intractable battle over abortion in a
foreign operations spending bill.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) rose to power in early 1995
on the crest of his upstart, Republican freshmen who were
determined to change Washington. But the partial government
shutdowns soon clipped Gingrich's wings.
The government closures of '95 and '96 may have been the
beginning of the end for Gingrich. But ironically, it was a
short-lived government shutdown in 1990 that helped propel Gingrich
to the speakership five years later. That government closure may
have marked the eventual undoing of President George HW Bush.
In October, 1990, Mr. Bush and Congressional Democrats hit a
wall when he vetoed a spending bill, shuttering the federal
government for the Columbus Day weekend. In many respects, that was
a token shutdown, impacting mostly tourists who were turned away
from federal parks and Smithsonian museums.
In 1988, President Bush defeated Democratic nominee Michael
Dukakis with the mantra "Read my lips: no new taxes." But right
after the 1990 shutdown stalemate, the president signaled he would
accept some tax increases for the wealthy in exchange for a cut in
the capital gains tax rate.
At the time, Gingrich was the House Republican Whip and
disagreed with the pact the president ultimately engineered with
Congressional Democrats on spending and taxes. Gingrich told ABC
that a GOP revolt was afoot and many Congressional Republicans
would balk at whatever plan Mr. Bush concocted.
Years later in a "Frontline" documentary (aired perhaps
ironically on PBS), Gingrich said that he "believed"
President Bush's no new taxes pledge from the '88 campaign and felt
Mr. Bush sold out Republicans.
"I thought that violated every aspect of the conservative
movement," Gingrich said. "I thought it was what distinguished
Republicans from the old-fashioned, traditional Republicans. And I
thought I had no choice. I would have betrayed everything I stood
for in my career."
Two years later, voters showed Bush 41 the door. And four years
after that, Gingrich engineered the first GOP takeover of the House
in decades. Which pitted Gingrich against Clinton in the 1995
impasse.
"The differences that exist between the two sides are very deep,
very fundamental," said President Clinton's spokesman Mike McCurry
when the government was locked in a shutdown on December 28,
1995.
The "differences" McCurry refers to are the same, if not even
more intense today. The sides are again warring over the size and
role of government. White-hot issues such as health care, abortion,
foreign aid and public broadcasting return as key ingredients in
this fusion.
Both Democratic and Republican leaders insist they want nothing
to do with a government shutdown when the current spending bill
expires in early March.
But we've seen this movie before. And if the dispute does
trigger a government shutdown, expect the political echoes to
resonate for years to come.
Just like what happened in 1995 and 1996.