Republican speakers have long solved this obstacle by cutting last-minute deals with their party’s holdouts. McCarthy (Calif.) should try to break the logjam, now and for the remainder of his tenure, with a new model: broker a comprehensive coalition contract with all his caucuses’ factions, as governments in other democracies often do.
Political parties in the United States have typically been much looser concoctions than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Elected members frequently vote against their party’s leadership and gum up the works of government for something they value individually. This has rarely caused chaos in the past, because these members either have had specific deliverables that are politically plausible or because their defections have been counterbalanced by defections from the other party.
Today’s hyperpartisan politics, however, all but precludes that second option. It means the only way to resolve an intraparty deadlock is to give in to recalcitrants’ demands. Democrats had to do this during the last Congress when they whittled down their agenda to satisfy their holdouts — Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.). Progressives remain angry that this obstructionism prevented even greater expansion of domestic spending, but at least the party got something done.
The Republican problem is different because the Freedom Caucus’s demands are simply not politically possible. There is no chance that domestic spending will be reduced to the level it wants as long as Democrats control the Senate or the White House, and its efforts to rein in defense spending is also a nonstarter with many Senate Republicans. The caucus’s refusal to acknowledge this is why it looks as though the United States will once again fail to adopt a foundation for responsible government: a comprehensive year-long budget.
McCarthy might be tempted to simply find a deal to pass this year’s discretionary spending bills, but that would only kick the can down the road. Each time this standoff happens, the stakes for failure increases. The Freedom Caucus might grudgingly submit, but it will retain the power to put the speaker through the wringer again at a moment’s notice.
This high-wire act increases tensions down the line: Each side has an incentive to hold out for more the next time to prove who has the upper hand. These never-ending, intensifying showdowns is not good for the country or the GOP.
Fortunately, there is a better approach, but it requires accepting that the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, is essentially a collection of ideologically diverse factions that would be different parties elsewhere. Engaging in the fiction that there is only one party encourages the type of regular blowups and breakdowns in governing that continue to make the United States look ungovernable to the rest of the world.
Instead, Republican leaders should broker a comprehensive governing agenda with all party factions, treating each as though they were separate parties. Regarding fiscal matters, this deal could take one of two approaches: The politically easier way would set tolerable spending levels that would likely be higher than the Freedom Caucus wants but also much lower than what Democrats desire. House Republicans would then present this as their best and final offer and dare Democrats and the Senate to fight them. This would tilt toward moderates on substance but toward conservatives in style.
The other approach would involve pushing fiscal limits similar to what the House GOP is trying to pass now, but with the tacit understanding that it wouldn’t fly. The agreement would also establish a detailed approach to the subsequent negotiations with the White House and Senate, giving the Freedom Caucus substantial involvement — but not veto power — in discussions. Getting these details right would be tricky, but the alternative would be a repeat of the debt limit extension deal that McCarthy cut with the help of Democratic votes.
A broader deal addressing the gamut of issues could be even more useful. House Republicans often produce a list of bullet points they call an agenda right before an election, as though to reinvigorate the 1994 Contract with America that helped propel the party to its first House majority in 40 years. An aggressive, detailed agreement could emulate that by providing specific solutions to problems that could attract the average voter’s attention.
Democrats always use the politics of a government shutdown to divide Republicans and paint them as dysfunctional. It’s time the GOP unites and puts the onus of governing responsibly back on their table.
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