How about I'll just say that the early-week negotiations over a fiscal cliff deal mattered a lot more than the late-week Plan B fiasco, and leave it at that.
What else? What do you think mattered this week?
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
Elsewhere: Kerry, NRA, More
I have one up at PP arguing that the best strategy for those who want to fight gun violence is to ignore the NRA.
At Greg's place today, my post says that it's probably a reasonable risk for Barack Obama to open up John Kerry's Senate seat. It's not clear yet whether that seat has a chance of taking a large bite out of the old, old, Senate, however.
Last night after the demise of Plan B I talked about where that leaves John Boehner -- and the fiscal cliff. Seriously: one thing that about half the commenters are missing is that it's always been the case that a final deal will get the votes of about half of House Republicans, not almost all of them. And it was always going to need, and get, half or more of the Democrats. It's always been the case, and it is now the case, that both John Boehner and Barack Obama have to support the final deal (and almost certainly the case that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell would support it). It's sort of irrelevant whether there are also plans that can get through the House only to die.
And, fine, it's a fairly boring issue, but yesterday I noted the success of a new program to get presidential candidates to plan early for the transition.
At Greg's place today, my post says that it's probably a reasonable risk for Barack Obama to open up John Kerry's Senate seat. It's not clear yet whether that seat has a chance of taking a large bite out of the old, old, Senate, however.
Last night after the demise of Plan B I talked about where that leaves John Boehner -- and the fiscal cliff. Seriously: one thing that about half the commenters are missing is that it's always been the case that a final deal will get the votes of about half of House Republicans, not almost all of them. And it was always going to need, and get, half or more of the Democrats. It's always been the case, and it is now the case, that both John Boehner and Barack Obama have to support the final deal (and almost certainly the case that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell would support it). It's sort of irrelevant whether there are also plans that can get through the House only to die.
And, fine, it's a fairly boring issue, but yesterday I noted the success of a new program to get presidential candidates to plan early for the transition.
Catch of the Day
Goes to David Greenberg, who makes the case that "the campaign to defeat [Robert Bork] was neither unprecedented nor illegitimate." Absolutely true. Greenberg traces the history of Supreme Court nominations, noting that three nominations had been defeated within twenty years of the Bork defeat, with each drawing plenty of harsh words from their opponents -- as did justices who were confirmed in that era, including Thurgood Marshall and William Rehnquist.
What I'd add to that is just that context matters, too. Greenberg emphasizes that the long stretch of the twentieth century during which the Senate went along with the president was historically unusual and attributes it to deference to presidents, but I suspect that a larger portion of it was that divided government was less common in that era. Bork's nomination actually came just after an extended period of unified government, at least between the White House and the Senate. Ronald Reagan basically ignored that and tried to make a highly ideological pick; it's not a surprise that it didn't work. The similarly ideological Scalia pick (and the Rehnquist elevation) might have succeeded because Bork did such a terrible job of acting "mainstream" in his hearing, but a larger part of it was that the 1986 elections intervened, with Democrats regaining control after six years.
Back to Greenberg:
And: nice catch!
What I'd add to that is just that context matters, too. Greenberg emphasizes that the long stretch of the twentieth century during which the Senate went along with the president was historically unusual and attributes it to deference to presidents, but I suspect that a larger portion of it was that divided government was less common in that era. Bork's nomination actually came just after an extended period of unified government, at least between the White House and the Senate. Ronald Reagan basically ignored that and tried to make a highly ideological pick; it's not a surprise that it didn't work. The similarly ideological Scalia pick (and the Rehnquist elevation) might have succeeded because Bork did such a terrible job of acting "mainstream" in his hearing, but a larger part of it was that the 1986 elections intervened, with Democrats regaining control after six years.
Back to Greenberg:
The Democratic campaign against Bork in 1987, then, wasn’t anything new; it merely resumed a dynamic that had been temporarily obscured — one as old as the republic and a perfectly fair, if often cynical, deployment of the Senate’s power to advise and consent.
The use of the verb “to Bork” may seem like a dig at an important intellectual figure in conservative jurisprudence and a martyr of the political right. But it really represents an unjustified triumph of a right-wing narrative that wrongly imagines blocking judicial nominees on ideological grounds to have begun with a gang of liberal Democrats — rather than with Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats opposed to the legal revolutions of the 1960s and keen to hand Lyndon Johnson a political defeat. It has given the legitimate restraint of presidential power a bad name.
And: nice catch!
Read Stuff, You Shold
Happy Birthday to Samuel L. Jackson, 64.
Right to the good stuff:
1. Chris Frates in National Journal gets it right on Plan B and the road ahead; see also a good pre-non-vote post by Matt Yglesias.
2. And of course you want to read Sarah Binder on the debacle.
3. The presidency and gun control, from Brendan Nyhan.
4. Jennifer Duffy with fun facts from the 2012 elections.
5. Philip Klein tries to talk sense to conservatives about realistic expectations from the fiscal cliff.
Right to the good stuff:
1. Chris Frates in National Journal gets it right on Plan B and the road ahead; see also a good pre-non-vote post by Matt Yglesias.
2. And of course you want to read Sarah Binder on the debacle.
3. The presidency and gun control, from Brendan Nyhan.
4. Jennifer Duffy with fun facts from the 2012 elections.
5. Philip Klein tries to talk sense to conservatives about realistic expectations from the fiscal cliff.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
No, Boehner Isn't Nuts
Speaker John Boehner is getting pretty bad reviews pretty much everywhere for his gambit of submitting a Plan B for a House vote, with Plan B made up of a set of tax policies which can't possibly become law. Democrats and some centrist types are upset with him because Plan B meant walking away from budget talks with the president just as they were apparently getting close to a deal. Conservatives, meanwhile, are against Plan B because it involves voting for what they consider a tax increase, with rates going up for a tiny group of highest-income filers (up compared with where they are now; of course, rates are scheduled to go up for lots of people if Congress does nothing by January 1). All of which leads to comments about Boehner being a very weak Speaker who can't control his own conference.
I think that's the wrong way to think about it. It's correct that Boehner can't order his conference to do whatever he wants; nor will they automatically trust what he says. But that's normal for all Speakers.
So what is Boehner up to? He knows -- knows -- that the election returns almost certainly meant that tax rates on at least some upper income filers were going to go up,* and that Republicans were either going to have to vote for a bill to set those tax rates before or after the Bush rates expired. What he might not know, however, is whether and to what extent his Members cared about the timing of the vote. How much were they willing to give up to push the bill past January 1 so that they could sell it as a tax cut (even though it would do exactly the same thing as a pre-January vote)? The Plan B vote might generate some information about that. Anyone voting for it would presumably be willing to vote for an overall fiscal cliff deal this month, after all, and pushing it to a vote might be the best way for Boehner to get a sense of whether he can get the votes for a deal -- or if he should just wait until January, even if it risks getting him a worse deal. More than that: it also could give him a sense of whether the Senate-passed taxes-only bill could pass the House. That one is a lot easier; it would presumably get every Democrat and therefore only need a small number of Republicans, whereas an overall deal would probably require a majority of both parties in order to pass (since Democrats wouldn't support it without Republican votes).
Will it work? Hard to say. It's easy to imagine Plan B winding up with basically zero votes if it comes up short -- I can very much imagine a scenario in which the vote on the House floor stalls at 200, and then everyone flips to "no" before the gavel comes down. While that would give Boehner some information (just the ongoing whip count gives him better information than he would have had without scheduling a vote), itt wouldn't accomplish the trick of making 218 Republicans on record voting for a tiny bit higher taxes, and therefore presumably more open to voting for a tiny bit more (that is: I think conservatives who are urging a no vote for this reason are basically correct about this).
Remember, at some point, House Republicans -- at least some of them, and probably more than half -- are going to have to vote for a tax bill which sets taxes higher than a full extension of current rates would set them. It might happen sooner, it might happen later, but it's going to happen.** Boehner knows that. Every House Republican should, and probably does, know that, although they might not know which of them will have to do it. Come to think of it, Plan B might not just be a method for Boehner to generate information; it also might be a way for him to teach his conference some of the basic facts of what has to happen, and their place in it.
And meanwhile...yeah, it wastes a few days of the Boehner/Obama negotiations, but even there it's certainly possible that the number-crunchers and the legislation-drafters are hard at work turning their almost-framework into the details they'll eventually need. And meanwhile: if he learns he has the votes to pass a mega-deal now then he can move ahead with one; if he learns he doesn't, then he can let everyone go home for the year and avoid the disaster of making a deal and then having it collapse on the House floor.
Put it all together, and I'm not at all convinced that Boehner is making any sort of mistake by scheduling the Plan B vote.
*Almost certainly? Yeah; I think it's at least vaguely possible in theory that Republicans could have found some trade that Democrats would accept, but in reality they don't actually value tax cuts for rich people quite that high. For example, what if Republicans said that they would vote for a serious climate bill in exchange for full renewal of the Bush-era tax cuts? Democrats would have to go for that, wouldn't they?
**Okay, there is one other way out of this for them; the idea they were floating a while back to vote "present" on a tax bill and let the Democrats pass it. Again, part of the question here is whether GOP-aligned groups see any difference in slightly different House Republican actions which deliver the same result.
I think that's the wrong way to think about it. It's correct that Boehner can't order his conference to do whatever he wants; nor will they automatically trust what he says. But that's normal for all Speakers.
So what is Boehner up to? He knows -- knows -- that the election returns almost certainly meant that tax rates on at least some upper income filers were going to go up,* and that Republicans were either going to have to vote for a bill to set those tax rates before or after the Bush rates expired. What he might not know, however, is whether and to what extent his Members cared about the timing of the vote. How much were they willing to give up to push the bill past January 1 so that they could sell it as a tax cut (even though it would do exactly the same thing as a pre-January vote)? The Plan B vote might generate some information about that. Anyone voting for it would presumably be willing to vote for an overall fiscal cliff deal this month, after all, and pushing it to a vote might be the best way for Boehner to get a sense of whether he can get the votes for a deal -- or if he should just wait until January, even if it risks getting him a worse deal. More than that: it also could give him a sense of whether the Senate-passed taxes-only bill could pass the House. That one is a lot easier; it would presumably get every Democrat and therefore only need a small number of Republicans, whereas an overall deal would probably require a majority of both parties in order to pass (since Democrats wouldn't support it without Republican votes).
Will it work? Hard to say. It's easy to imagine Plan B winding up with basically zero votes if it comes up short -- I can very much imagine a scenario in which the vote on the House floor stalls at 200, and then everyone flips to "no" before the gavel comes down. While that would give Boehner some information (just the ongoing whip count gives him better information than he would have had without scheduling a vote), itt wouldn't accomplish the trick of making 218 Republicans on record voting for a tiny bit higher taxes, and therefore presumably more open to voting for a tiny bit more (that is: I think conservatives who are urging a no vote for this reason are basically correct about this).
Remember, at some point, House Republicans -- at least some of them, and probably more than half -- are going to have to vote for a tax bill which sets taxes higher than a full extension of current rates would set them. It might happen sooner, it might happen later, but it's going to happen.** Boehner knows that. Every House Republican should, and probably does, know that, although they might not know which of them will have to do it. Come to think of it, Plan B might not just be a method for Boehner to generate information; it also might be a way for him to teach his conference some of the basic facts of what has to happen, and their place in it.
And meanwhile...yeah, it wastes a few days of the Boehner/Obama negotiations, but even there it's certainly possible that the number-crunchers and the legislation-drafters are hard at work turning their almost-framework into the details they'll eventually need. And meanwhile: if he learns he has the votes to pass a mega-deal now then he can move ahead with one; if he learns he doesn't, then he can let everyone go home for the year and avoid the disaster of making a deal and then having it collapse on the House floor.
Put it all together, and I'm not at all convinced that Boehner is making any sort of mistake by scheduling the Plan B vote.
*Almost certainly? Yeah; I think it's at least vaguely possible in theory that Republicans could have found some trade that Democrats would accept, but in reality they don't actually value tax cuts for rich people quite that high. For example, what if Republicans said that they would vote for a serious climate bill in exchange for full renewal of the Bush-era tax cuts? Democrats would have to go for that, wouldn't they?
**Okay, there is one other way out of this for them; the idea they were floating a while back to vote "present" on a tax bill and let the Democrats pass it. Again, part of the question here is whether GOP-aligned groups see any difference in slightly different House Republican actions which deliver the same result.
Cloture Votes Do Not Equal Filibusters
I don't really agree with filibuster abolitionist Tim Noah about the solution to the dysfunctional Senate, but I need to correct him anyway when he makes his case weaker than it is. Noah:
Cloture vote counts are useful if you want to make comparisons between Congresses. They're not even close to perfect for that, but then again nothing else is either. But we don't need to count cloture votes to know what's going on here. It's every single item.
(Okay, a very slight clarification. During the current Congress, although not in the 111th Congress, Republicans backed off the absolute 60 standard on one or two nominations, which implies that they may have backed off it for a bit more than that. Maybe. Maybe not.)
Anyway, cloture votes simple do not equal filibusters. The Majority Leader may not -- does not -- bother bringing things to the floor in the first place if he knows he'll need 60 votes and doesn't have it. A filibuster may end with a deal, rather than a cloture vote, especially (but not always) because the majority doesn't have 60. For example, a filibuster to defeat a controversial provision in an otherwise uncontroversial bill could end with the provision stripped from the bill before any cloture petition is filed. It's also possible that the Majority Leader could file a cloture petition and get a vote on it even if the minority really didn't have any intention of preventing a final vote; Republicans have in fact accused Harry Reid of doing so, but given that they're demanding 60 I would still count it as a filibuster.
Once again: cloture votes do not equal filibusters. They are a poor measure of filibusters, even when they might be the best measure we have. In some cases, they can be a useful measure nonetheless. But we do not need any measurement at all for the 111th and 112th Congresses; all we need are the repeated claims by the minority party that it requires 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate, and the observation that, in fact, it does require 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate.
Absolutely everything -- every bill introduced, every amendment offered, virtually every nomination -- is filibustered in the current Senate. That's the count everyone should be using.
The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg recently calculated that during the past three years Republicans achieved "very nearly one filibuster for every single goddam day the Senate is in session" [italics and impiety his, though I endorse both]. Meanwhile, I've calculated that during the current Congress the Senate's ratio of cloture votes (roughly speaking, filibusters) to bills passed doubled.Look: since 2009, Republicans have insisted on a 60 vote Senate. End of story. That means they are filibustering every single item.
Cloture vote counts are useful if you want to make comparisons between Congresses. They're not even close to perfect for that, but then again nothing else is either. But we don't need to count cloture votes to know what's going on here. It's every single item.
(Okay, a very slight clarification. During the current Congress, although not in the 111th Congress, Republicans backed off the absolute 60 standard on one or two nominations, which implies that they may have backed off it for a bit more than that. Maybe. Maybe not.)
Anyway, cloture votes simple do not equal filibusters. The Majority Leader may not -- does not -- bother bringing things to the floor in the first place if he knows he'll need 60 votes and doesn't have it. A filibuster may end with a deal, rather than a cloture vote, especially (but not always) because the majority doesn't have 60. For example, a filibuster to defeat a controversial provision in an otherwise uncontroversial bill could end with the provision stripped from the bill before any cloture petition is filed. It's also possible that the Majority Leader could file a cloture petition and get a vote on it even if the minority really didn't have any intention of preventing a final vote; Republicans have in fact accused Harry Reid of doing so, but given that they're demanding 60 I would still count it as a filibuster.
Once again: cloture votes do not equal filibusters. They are a poor measure of filibusters, even when they might be the best measure we have. In some cases, they can be a useful measure nonetheless. But we do not need any measurement at all for the 111th and 112th Congresses; all we need are the repeated claims by the minority party that it requires 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate, and the observation that, in fact, it does require 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate.
Absolutely everything -- every bill introduced, every amendment offered, virtually every nomination -- is filibustered in the current Senate. That's the count everyone should be using.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Aubrey Huff, 36.
A bit of good stuff:
1. A DC Statehood bill is introduced. I'm sort of thinking it won't quite pass this year...Mike DeBonis is not amused.
2. Brian Beutler on Plan B, which he sees as a Boehner misfire. Could be.
3. Dan Drezner isn't particularly upset about the Kagans.
4. And what's up with TSA, by Amy Zegart.
A bit of good stuff:
1. A DC Statehood bill is introduced. I'm sort of thinking it won't quite pass this year...Mike DeBonis is not amused.
2. Brian Beutler on Plan B, which he sees as a Boehner misfire. Could be.
3. Dan Drezner isn't particularly upset about the Kagans.
4. And what's up with TSA, by Amy Zegart.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
