It seemed so simple a few days ago.
Back when James Mattis was still Defense Secretary…
Back when kids calling the NORAD tracking hotline still held a marginal belief in Santa Claus…
Back when the government was fully funded.
All
100 senators agreed to a stopgap spending bill (a “Continuing
Resolution” or “CR” in the Congressional lingua franca) a week ago
Wednesday night. The bill would run the government until February 8. The
House was poised to follow suit and pass the CR on Thursday or Friday,
keep the federal lights on and dispatch everyone home for the holidays.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) deposited the interim spending
bill on the Senate floor early in the day on Wednesday.
“I don’t
believe he would bring it up unless he had assurances that the President
would sign the CR,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman
Richard Shelby (R-AL). “But you never know.”
Shelby’s instincts were right.
You never know with President Trump.
There
were strong signals from the White House last Thursday morning that
Trump would grudgingly sign a stopgap spending bill to fund the
government – even though the package lacked money for a border wall.
But you never know.
Trump’s
oscillation began when he got an earful from the conservative House
Freedom Caucus Wednesday night. Freedom Caucus Leader Rep. Mark Meadows
(R-NC) declared that Trump’s base would revolt if he signed the
"Band-Aid" bill. Meadows predicted that signing the legislation would
inflict “major damage” to Trump’s 2020 re-election bid.
The gig
was up Thursday morning when Trump dialed House Speaker Paul Ryan
(R-WI), summoning him from a House GOP Conference meeting. It just
wasn’t Freedom Caucus members who were upset about advancing a spending
bill without the wall. Many rank-and-file members were irate. They felt
hung out to dry – again. They campaigned on the wall. They swallowed
hard when wall funding wasn’t tucked into the March package. Same with
interim spending bills in September and November. Would the leadership
wash their hands of the issue and rush home for the holidays?
Ryan
puts the brakes on everything after the phone call. The House wouldn’t
accept the Senate’s bill. The House would take the Senate’s “clean”
spending measure and tack on $5 billion for the wall.
“We came out
of our conference today more unified,” boasted Meadows. “I looked at
(President Trump) in the eyes today and he was serious about not folding
without a fight.”
Meadows said the GOP leadership realized they had to push for the wall. The “clean” Senate bill wouldn’t do.
“The assumption was that there were not enough votes there,” said Meadows.
+++++++++++++
Friday,
December 21st was both the shortest and longest day of the year in
Washington. However, the political day ran past midnight into Saturday,
December 22nd.
The bill to fund the government - in any form - was
still ricocheting around the Capitol, caroming from the House to the
Senate, back to the House and returning to the Senate.
The Senate
struggled to even start a debate on the House-amended plan that provided
funding for the wall. A roll call vote started at 12:31 p.m. ET Friday
to “proceed” to the House-plan. That required a majority vote. But many
senators were absent, having already fled Washington for the holidays.
The vote remained open for hours with the yeas, in favor of starting
debate, lagging behind the nays.
Vice President Mike Pence and
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney finally materialized at
the Capitol to talk with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Pence’s services could be required to break a tie. Behind the scenes,
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) helped broker an agreement just to initiate
debate.
At 5:49 p.m. ET, the Senate finally closed the procedural
vote after five hours and 18 minutes. It was the longest vote in Senate
history, besting the five-hour-and-15-minute marathon from February 2009
on President Obama’s stimulus package.
On the government funding
procedural vote, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was a no. Flake then flipped to
yea. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), one of the most conservative Democrats in
the Senate and facing a tough re-election in 2020, voted aye. Corker had
lurked around the Capitol all day but had not yet cast a ballot. Corker
voted yes, making it a 47-47 tie. Pence then broke the tie, 48-47,
formally getting the Senate on the bill.
“Most of the conversation
today has been about process and not the negotiations themselves,” said
Flake. “The House bill is dead.”
In other words, it was a
challenge to even convince a majority of senators to consider the House
plan with the wall. That’s to say nothing of securing 60 votes to end a
filibuster and usher a final version of the package to passage.
There
was a flurry of activity at the Capitol late Friday afternoon. One
senior House Republican source close to the negotiations indicated there
was a “sense of optimism now,” adding, “I think they are trying to
clear it with the White House.”
The prospective plan was to agree
to brand-new, full spending measures for the rest of the fiscal year.
Not interim measures through February or anything like that. But the
wall was the holdup – as it’s always been the holdup.
By
nightfall, the House adjourned for the day, with most lawmakers dashing
to the four winds. That assured a partial government shutdown that night
at midnight.
Congress would be in session on Saturday. But few lawmakers would be anywhere near the Capitol to solve the crisis.
+++++++++++++
Only
a skeleton crew of staff and lawmakers darkened the door of the Capitol
on Saturday. Members of the press corps certainly outnumbered the
number of aides and members.
Ryan was at the Capitol to open up a
rare Saturday session of the House at noon, precisely 12 hours after the
government lurched into a partial shutdown. But what was the plan to
bridge the impasse? Would Ryan’s Speakership end on January 3 at noon
with parts of the federal government shuttered?
Ryan was having
none of it, never breaking stride as he booked his way through Statuary
Hall of the Capitol, bound for his office.
“It goes over there,”
said Ryan, pointing toward the United States Senate chamber across the
Capitol Rotunda. “Over there. You know that.”
Ryan portrayed
himself as a mere bystander. And in this instance, he was more than
willing to deflect the Christmastime quandary to the world’s greatest
deliberative body.
That said, some whispered at the Capitol that
the outgoing Speaker, off the job when the new Congress convenes, should
have taken a hit. They suggested that Ryan should have taken the clean
Senate bill, lacking wall money and put it on the floor. Lots of
Republicans would have balked. But it likely would have passed with a
coalition of many Democrats and some GOPers. What did Ryan have to lose?
He’s out the door soon. His last act of Speaker may have been an effort
to keep the government open.
But President Trump wouldn’t have signed the plan. And so Ryan went a different direction.
It
was thought the administration had an outside chance to reach a deal
Saturday afternoon with lawmakers and perhaps summon everyone back to
Washington to vote Sunday night.
The sides were “swapping paper,” but in reality, they were nowhere near an agreement.
That
afternoon, Trump summoned a group of hardline conservatives to the
White House to discuss the border wall - a group that included Meadows,
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would only
embolden the president on the wall fight.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby was also invited.
Multiple sources say the White House included Shelby as an effort to show him how serious they were about the wall.
But
some Republicans fretted there could now be an issue with the
conservatives. The House GOP brass did an about-face and pushed a
funding bill on the floor with the wall late Thursday. That steeled
their resolve. How could House Republicans now accept anything less than
$5 billion since the leadership forced a vote on the revamped bill?
“We often have that problem when we over-conservatize,” said a senior House Republican leadership source.
And so the House and Senate return on December 27. But so far, there’s nothing obvious to break the dam.
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once declared that the most important factors in politics were “events.”
We’ve seen other instances where “events” sparked expeditious resolutions to shutdowns.
Such
was the case during the January shutdown. Democrats quickly folded
after it was found the public was hammering them in public opinion
polls.
A wild car chase and shootout at the Capitol in October
2013 – along with the debt ceiling – helped bring a hasty end a
two-and-a-half week shutdown over defunding Obamacare. One U.S. Capitol
Police officer was injured in the mayhem. Lawmakers put aside their
differences and reopened the government. Lawmakers argued that USCP
officers were on the job and willing to put their lives on the line to
defend the Capitol - even though they weren’t getting paid.
So
what will end this shutdown? An unforeseen event? Terrorism? An
international crisis? A deeper market shock? President Trump signing a
bill without full wall funding? Democrats accepting wall funding?
You never know.