Later today, the United States Senate will vote on and presumably pass a plan to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. The legislation will then go on to the House, where it is expected to pass as well. It will end up on President Obama’s desk, who will sign it.
Congratulations everybody, we’ve just barely avoided complete and total disaster.
Now it’s time for the fallout.
For those of you that are curious, here are the details of the deal:
- The government would be funded through January 15th at current sequester levels.
- The debt ceiling would be extended to February 7th
- Furloughed federal workers will receive backpay.
- The House and Senate will be required to open a conference committee to create a budget.
- Income verification requirements for the Affordable Care Act will be reinstated. They had previously been delayed a year.
So, what does this mean? Well, in political terms, this was an absolute ass-kicking. The GOP gained absolutely nothing, and actually lost quite a bit. The polling for this has been abysmal, dropping public approval of the GOP to the lowest levels ever recorded. From a policy perspective, the only thing the GOP got was slightly enhanced income verification requirements, which were already going to go into effect next year. The Democrats got a mostly clean CR and an extension of the debt ceiling both set to kick in before the next round of sequester cuts, which is a huge win for them. The addition of backpay for furloughed federal workers was a big win as well.
In 1854, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, about a unit of British cavalry assaulting a heavily fortified Russian position during the Crimean War. The Light Brigade was decimated and forced to retreat immediately after taking heavy casualties and failing to dislodge the Russian troops.
The GOP has met a similar defeat. While we’re still slightly over a year from Midterm elections, you can be sure that the DNC will be running adds in every remotely vulnerable GOP district reminding people who shut down the government and gained nothing for the trouble.
The biggest win, however, may be the inclusion of provision which would change the way Congress votes on the next debt-limit increase. The provision, originally created by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling fight, allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase. The President can then veto this legislation, and unless Congress is able to override the President’s veto (which is EXTREMELY unlikely), the debt ceiling would be raised.
The fallout from the past few weeks will echo over the weeks and months to come. We have a writer for the American Conservative saying “I hope the House flights to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts.”. A writer for Business Insider said “There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.”
We may be, at long last, seeing the beginnings of a split between the pro-Business wing of the GOP and the rabid, frothing, unwashed masses that comprise their base. The party is ungovernable, and beholden to its leadership or elites.
Unfortunately for us, the party is unlikely to become less conservative in 2014. If anything, it’s more likely to become more conservative, as the R+5 districts sack their representatives for Democrats, while the R+10 districts send theirs back to Congress.
Tomorrow, the sun will rise, the markets will move, and we will all breathe a little easier knowing that we avoided total disaster only by the skin of our teeth.
