Plenty of Blame to Go Around

“Government shutdowns [are] an unpleasant but integral part of the legislative-executive power struggle ... built into the American Constitution,” former Republican Speaker-of-the-House Newt Gingrich wrote in a recent blog post. Gingrich knows this firsthand, having negotiated with President Clinton to end the longest government shutdown in American history seventeen years ago. Because our generation does not remember the yearly shutdowns of the Carter years, the twelve shutdowns initiated by Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill in the 1980s, or the cross-aisle negotiations that ended the Clinton Administration shutdowns, we feel understandably panicked, confused, and embarrassed regarding the current political dysfunction.

Government shutdowns, while costly, are completely constitutional last-ditch tools forcing negotiation between the legislative and executive branches. They have also proven extremely effective in the past, with the 1996 shutdown resulting in economic growth, a balanced budget, and bipartisan compromises on welfare and social services.

Yet there remains something fundamentally different about this government shutdown: instead of trying to reach bipartisan compromise through proper negotiations, both Republicans and Democrats seem more interested in playing a bitter blame game over who caused the shutdown and, therefore, who must bow to the other to end it. Democrats vilify the Republican House and its Tea Party members as “hostage takers” abusing their power; Republicans assert that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate are holding a gun to their heads, ignoring their concerns, and refusing bipartisan solutions.

Certainly, the Republican House is primarily to blame for this shutdown, but they have not, as President Obama opined last Saturday, “demanded a ransom just for doing their jobs.” When the Democratic-controlled Senate warned that they would accept “nothing short of a ‘clean’ continuation of funding,” rather than working across the aisle to facilitate an amenable budget inclusive of both parties’ interests, the Republican-controlled House threw the American government into shutdown mode to force bipartisan compromise.

While many media outlets and Americans have criticized GOP Congressmen for “not doing their jobs,” the shutdown represents House Republicans’ desperate attempts to voice the complaints and demands of their constituents. Yes, House Republicans are maintaining a hard-line on defunding Obamacare and other key conservative issues, but this stance is a reaction to the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to negotiate on the same issues. “The President just can’t sit there and say, ‘I’m not going to negotiate,’” Speaker John Boehner emphasized last week. “He got his revenues. Now it’s time to talk about his spending problem.”

Contrary to popular liberal belief, House Republicans know that Obamacare will not be defunded. But the Republican Party has proposed tax-rate cuts, expanded offshore drilling, Keystone pipeline approval, Wall Street deregulation, and Medicare cuts as potential alternatives Democrats could offer in exchange for Obamacare’s protection. Republicans do not want complete victory and Democratic submission; they only desire something in the budget appealing to their constituents.

Instead of launching into negotiations immediately after the shutdown, President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to negotiate with House Republicans “until the House passes a ‘clean’ budget,” a counter-productive proposal that ignores the House’s constitutionally ordained position as a check of executive power. “The Democrats have calculated that by prolonging the shutdown, and maximizing the pain, they can bully Republicans into doing whatever,” Republican Senator John Cornyn stated last Saturday, “but we’re never going to make real progress without cooperation from our friends across the aisle.” And so Democrats are deliberately prolonging the shutdown and hurting the American people in their efforts to force Republicans to fold.

The result? The two parties are both bullying each other, both continuing to maintain a hard line and both holding one another hostage. This is dirty, shameful politics, and so far, only the Republican Party has shown willingness to compromise.

The longer Democrats refuse to acknowledge the reasonable demands for compromise and collaboration being proposed by House Republicans, the more legitimacy our government loses and the closer we drift towards defaulting on our loans. While the government shutdown furloughs the wages of 800,000 federal employees and shuts down federal services from cancer research to national parks, crossing the debt ceiling would result in inexcusable global economic disaster. Both Republicans and Democrats are desperate to pass a budget before October 17th, but, as Speaker Boehner stated at the beginning of the shutdown, “the only way these problems are going to be resolved is if we sit down amicably ... and come to an agreement.”

Playing the blame game won’t cause our government to reopen; both sides have embarrassed the American people with their refusal to negotiate. But despite who is at fault for the shutdown, it is undoubtedly the Democratic leadership that must initiate actual compromise with the House Republicans and end this fiasco.