Republicans Admitted in May That They Wouldn’t Negotiate on Budget Without a Hostage

To See President Biden's 5 Best Jokes At The White House Correspondents Dinner visit The Daily.

Republicans have been avoiding budget reconciliation like the plague, which led us to needing a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government since we have no budget, which led to their ability to refuse to pass a CR unless they get goodies that they would never have gotten had they done things the proper way.

Now you know why they waited until the last minute; they were counting down to the two most vulnerable hostages they could take – the economy and the debt ceiling.

Republicans wouldn’t even name negotiators for budget reconciliation. In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that they planned the threat of imminent shutdown months ago. How pleased Wall Street must be with House Republicans, as stocks tumbled over the uncertainty.

For a long time, Republicans made hay demanding a budget be passed using “regular order”. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) liked to huff about it regularly on TV. But in the meantime, it turned out that under Obama, government spending was slower than any time since Eisenhower. We were spending less and we had this odd thing called “revenue” coming in due to tax increases so we were not going in the hole as soon as expected. Stocks surged. In June, the U.S. government posted a ‘huge’ budget surplus for June, in fact the largest for that month on record at $117 billion.

Things were good for America, but bad for the GOP. As long as things were getting better for the country, Republicans had nothing to hang on to in order to force their own agenda.

Thus they turned to their old standby, the hostage. In order to get to the hostages of the funding of the government and the debt ceiling, Republicans had to wait out a long summer of nothingness, which they filled with endless distractions over scandals they manufactured. These scandals served the purpose of both dirtying Obama and Clinton and also diverting attention from their refusal to sit down for budget reconciliation.

I wrote this repeatedly over the summer as I suspected as much, but it still dazzles me in its audaciously obvious gamesmanship now that we are here. In May, the Republicans were whipping up scandals to avoid the fact that Obama had the most rapid deficit reduction since World War II. This meant that Obama had a better record of deficit reduction than any recent Republican president.

It’s kinda awkward to go into budget “negotiations” after losing an election (the voters said no to Republican ideas save for the most gerrymandered, localized elections) and losing the ideological battle on the very issue you’re negotiating over.

So, House Republicans avoided their constitutional duty to fund the government. The Washington Post reported in May that Paul Ryan admitted that Republicans would not go to budget negotiations because Democrats had no reason to give in to Republicans:

Without that leverage, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday, there is no point in opening formal budget negotiations between the House and the Senate, because Democrats have no reason to consider the kind of far-reaching changes to Medicare and the U.S. tax code that Republicans see as fundamental building blocks of a deal.

To that end, Senate Democrats attempted to go to conference on the budget 18 times and Republicans blocked every attempt, staring on April 23. Here’s a roundup of the Republican avoidance per the DPCC (waving hi to delay/defund hero Ted Cruz):

Sen. Toomey (R-PA): “Mr. President, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Senator Sessions, is not available because he has a conflict at the moment. On his behalf, I object.” [Floor Remarks, 4/23/13]

Sen. Cruz (R-TX): “Yes. I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/6/13]

Sen. McConnell (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/7/13]

Sen. McConnell (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/8/13]

Sen. McConnell (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/9/13]

Sen. McConnell (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/14/13]

Sen. McConnell (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/15/13]

Sen. Lee (R-UT): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/16/13]

Sen. Paul (R-KY): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/21/13]

Sen. Rubio (R-FL): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 5/22/13]

Sen. Lee (R-UT): “I object to the motion on the floor.” [Floor Remarks, 5/23/13]

Sen. Rubio (R-FL): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 6/4/13]

Sen. Lee (R-UT): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 6/12/13]

Sen. Toomey (R-PA): “And so I object.” [Floor Remarks, 6/19/13]

Sen. Cruz (R-TX): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 6/26/13]

Sen. Rubio (R-FL): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 7/11/13]

Sen. Lee (R-UT): “In that case, I object.” [Floor Remarks, 7/17/13]

Sen. Rubio (R-FL): “I object.” [Floor Remarks, 8/1/13]

Now Republicans are pretending they are all for conference. Sure, now that they have their juicy, quivering hostage in sight, “negotiations” (aka, terrorism) can commence. Yea for nihilism, lawlessness and anarchy, also known as the modern day Republican Party.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.