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When we last checked in on long-running dispute over federal deficits, Congress had just raised the federal debt ceiling, a move that fended off hardline Republicans who demanded deep spending cuts, and averted a debt default that could have caused a global depression. At the time, there was much rejoicing.
“We can pass serious, major pieces of legislation,” boasted western Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, who as a GOP deputy whip is tasked with getting rank-and-file Republicans on the same page as party leadership.
“I look forward to working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle … to avoid a crisis like this one in the future,” said fellow Republican Rep. Mike Kelly.
Oh, for the innocence of that bygone era, known to our elders as “early June.” For we are now faced with yet another crisis: not a first-ever debt default but yet another in a long line of government shutdowns. This too is being precipitated by fiscal conservatives, who didn’t get everything they wanted this summer and whose demands now could prevent the government from funding operations — including paying military service members — starting this weekend.
To be clear: As I write this, it’s still at least theoretically possible a shutdown doesn’t happen. Even Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the caucus of House Republicans whose budget-cutting demands are driving the shutdown threat, has said he hopes to avoid it. “I don’t know that a government shutdown gets us anything,” he told Fox Business earlier this month. “And I for one would prefer to avoid that.”
And at first blush, a new Monmouth University poll seems like a red flag for the GOP.
“By a 2 to 1 margin, Americans want Congress to compromise on the federal budget in order to avoid a government shutdown,” the poll release begins. “Nearly two-thirds of the public (64%) want members of Congress who best represent their own views on spending priorities to compromise on those principles in order to avoid a shutdown.”
But a closer look at the numbers suggests that the enthusiasm for bipartisanship breaks down along partisan lines. Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to say they wanted their party’s representatives to stand their ground, come what may. And hostility to compromise, said Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray, is strongest among “conservative MAGA Republicans who say, 'Damn the torpedoes, shut down the government.’”
While that kind of unyielding opposition may be unpopular with Americans nationwide, he said, “We don't have national elections” — just elections that are decided state by state, district by district. “The way these issues play out in specific congressional races is much more important than the national view when you're trying to understand the strategy.”
That’s why it’s no surprise that Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a Congressional district almost evenly divided between Republican and Democratic voters, co-chairs a bipartisan “Problem Solvers Caucus” and urges that “solutions to issues as critical as funding the federal government demand … compromises.”
But if you’re a Republican in a largely conservative district, your job is probably more at risk from a GOP challenger in the primary than from a compromise-minded Dem in the fall. And while Democrats hope that debt ceiling fights and shutdowns will hurt Republicans at the polls, it’s not clear that will happen.
The last big debt ceiling crisis, after all, was followed by huge Republican gains in the 2014 midterm election. The recent Monmouth poll, meanwhile, provides little evidence the current fight will hurt the GOP either. When asked “Who will you hold the most responsible if there is a shutdown?” a plurality of respondents — 43% — said they’d blame congressional Republicans. But 27% would blame President Biden and another 21% would blame congressional Democrats — a total of 48% blaming Democrats. That includes independents, 52% of whom say they’d hold either Biden or Democrats in Congress responsible — again for a crisis that stems entirely from a dispute within the ranks of the GOP.
Perceptions can change if a shutdown actually happens, of course. And Reschenthaler did offer a fairly downbeat assessment of the prospects for avoiding a shutdown earlier this month, telling the Tribune-Democrat, “There are so many extraneous issues out there — impeachment and border security — that it’s difficult to see what can be negotiated and how to move forward.”
Since making those remarks, Rescenthaler has focused heavily on those issues himself, putting out multiple press releases about an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and posting a dozen tweets about the border in the past week alone. That messaging is consistent with his party’s top leadership, which has sought to change the subject from the brewing shutdown to border security — all the better to shift the focus, and the blame, to Biden.
If a shutdown is avoided or lasts only a few days, it may have few consequences for politicians or anyone else. Still, Murray warns that such fights do have a lasting impact on public opinion. Over the long haul, he said, they risk “feeding the sense that government can’t work. And the more that faith in government is undermined, the more [politics] becomes a race to the bottom.”
And when it comes to gauging political blowback from something like a shutdown, he added, “The old model of what would happen doesn’t apply anymore, because of how entrenched people’s tribalism is.”
Which is why no matter what happens in the days ahead, I’ll say what I said after the debt ceiling fight ended four months ago: It’s hard to see a reason to believe this won’t all happen again.
