Matt Gaetz is Having A Moment
Can the upstart force the entire government to get real about the debt crisis?
To listen to many in the news media, we face Armageddon this week as the government, barring some last minute arm twisting (which would likely be a short term funding agreement in exchange for small policy gives), is scheduled to shut down on Sunday October 1st. This comes as the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy faces increasing pressure from Republican members to deliver the promises he made in order to get the job as Speaker in the first place. Matt Gaetz, a rising star in Republican circles and on cable news, is leading this fight as he did with Mr. McCarthy’s speakership votes.
In fact, the Federal government has shut down 21 times since 1976, or just over once every 2 years. It happens regularly enough that most Americans don’t really notice, and the bureaucracy has invented ways to keep large swaths of the government open regardless. Checks will be in the mail. Soldiers will be at their posts. FBI and DEA will be working cases. So the looming “shutdown” is really a metaphor for the tortured disfunction of Congress, whose members also love to use potential and real shutdowns to bludgeon the other side and score political points.
President Reagan shut down the government eight times during his presidency, the most of any President. Here are some of his thoughts on the matter:
“You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”
AND
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!”
The current kerfuffle is centered around the promises Speaker McCarthy made in January in order to win the gavel. He promised, among other things to:
Schedule individual votes on each of the 12 appropriations bills and excluding earmarks from such bills
Force a vote on a balanced budget amendment
To date, the Speaker has not delivered on these and other promises, and Matt Gaetz rose on the floor of the House to publicly call Mr. McCarthy out in this failure, calling the Speaker “the valet that advances Mr. Biden’s agenda.” This action directly caused the Speaker and many in his caucus to react, tacking course. Nonetheless, Mr. Gaetz has more recently (on the Maria Bartiromo show, linked above) charged the Speaker with cow-towing to lobbyists and special interests to stop passage of many of the appropriations bills in lieu of another Continuing Resolution (CR). CRs are gimmicks employed to fund current levels of spending so Congress doesn’t have to do the hard work of writing and passing appropriations bills. CRs are generally a terrible way to govern, but Congress seems to like them a lot:
“Despite the obvious drawbacks to short-term funding measures, they’re commonplace in Congress. With a few exceptions, at least one has been enacted almost every fiscal year since 1977, with the exceptions of 1989, 1995, and 1997. That means Congress has failed to pass a budget by October 1 almost every year for 45 years.”
Today, the Speaker is working to advance 4 appropriations bills through the House, which include conservative-leaning appropriations for Defense, Agriculture, State and Homeland Security. If these were to pass, they would need to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President before Sunday to protect these departments from the shutdown. Meanwhile, centrist Representatives have a competing plan with a CR to fund the government at current levels through January 11th and add $24B more for Ukraine (bringing our total funding for that proxy war to $137B) and $16B for “disaster relief aid.” To add to the confusion, the Speaker had already announced his own short-term deal that he apparently still wants to pass. Plus, any of these 3 options the Speaker is able to move forward with must be approved by the Senate and the President, who will likely be in opposition to anything coming out of the House.
So, it really looks like a shut down is coming. At the Country, we applaud Mr. Gaetz’ and others efforts to return the House to regular order and force votes on appropriations bills. As we’ve written, we think he and his allies should take this fight one step further: in order to fund the government, and in addition to any short term spending cuts that can pass, there must be a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment in both chambers of Congress. The only argument against forcing a shutdown are political - politicians and their allies afraid they may lose power - meaning they may not get re-elected.
To any of these representatives, we’d like you to ask yourself 3 questions:
What is the purpose of having power if not to use it?
Do you think the American people elected you to focus on your own re-election as your top priority?
Are you willing to sacrifice your career in the short term in order to drastically improve the lives of the American People in the long term by helping to end the debt crisis?
Mr. Gaetz knows his answers to these questions. I hope he can help his more squeamish colleagues find the courage to answer them too.