Welcome to Democracy 2.0

The Republican rebellion that has led to the shutdown has given us a new form of government in which “one faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government does not get [does get] to shut down the entire government”, to invert what the president said.
A Capitol deep in shadow
It is a government in which a radical faction in the House takes its instruction from a Senator — Ted Cruz of Texas — and House boss John Boehner is fearful of challenging them. It is a government in which Speaker Boehner calls the president “irresponsible” for his "insistence on steamrolling ahead with this flawed program", referring to the health care law passed by Boehner’s own legislative body. A government in which news reports said House Republicans coming from a meeting where it was decided to go forward with government closure seemed “ecstatic”. “This is about the happiest I’ve seen members in a long time”, exclaimed Michelle Bachmann (R-Mn). The shutdown “is exactly what we hoped for”.

And, most notably, it is a government with a Congress that has decided not to pay for spending that Congress itself mandated by law.

The latest is that the House has derailed a bipartisan plan sent over by the Senate that the Speaker will not put forward because it depends on votes by House Democrats for passage. By such parochial myopia are we about to default on the “full faith and credit” of the United States possibly triggering a worldwide calamity.

In the new democracy a law passed by Congress, a law signed by a president whom the public re-elected, a law upheld by the Supreme Court, is an “intrusion into God-given American freedom...an unconstitutional taking of God-given American liberty”, says Iowa's Steve King. The Court's ruling notwithstanding, Republicans believe Obamacare unconstitutional for requiring that people take responsibility for themselves by buying health insurance rather than sending the bill for an illness to the rest of us.

The media did a better job in this second debt ceiling donnybrook in explaining that raising the debt limit does not authorize the government to spend more money; it permits the government to borrow to pay for what Congress itself ordered the executive branch to spend and now owes. But the media could have taken it further by pointing out that the need to borrow is caused by Congress voting for spending in excess of the tax revenue that Congress itself decided would be adequate these last dozen years when it passed tax cuts that resulted in the government collecting only 81 cents for every dollar of spending.

But representatives whom we send to Washington don’t even know how that works. All that raising the debt limit does, thinks Walter Jones (R-NC), “is just say, ‘Well, you’ve got a little bit more credit — keep spending’”. Ted Yoho (R-Fl) thinks defaulting on the debt would be a good thing. "I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets".

In our new democracy, laws are continually up for re-trading. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca) is exasperated: “They have refused to even consider the compromise that we have offered”. Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer is outraged: “They won’t even negotiate with us on anything”. John Duncan (R-Tn) is irked that “the president refuses to compromise on anything”.

What they call “compromise” anyone else would call “capitulation”. Demands to defund or delay Obamacare find no matching concession in the counter offer that would only give back what was taken away: a functioning government and affirmation that “the validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned”, to quote that same Constitution we are told by Jim Bridenstine (R-Ok)is “the supreme law of the land”. Well, sometimes, apparently.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz asks, ”What have the Democrats compromised on? Nothing”. Mitch McConnell complains, “He’s more than willing to negotiate with Iranians. I don’t know why he wouldn’t negotiate with us”.

And for good reason. There is nothing to negotiate. Part one, the country needs money to pay for the spending Congress voted for. Part two, the Affordable Care Act is law, and now going into full effect. Laws are not subject to ad hoc tinkering. There is a process whereby they may be changed or repealed, first by the “regular order” of House and Senate agreement, then by the signature of the President. But in the new democracy, 40-plus attempts at repeal entitles a disgruntled faction to hijack a law because they don’t like it.

crowd pleasers The “compromise” first included a long list that Obama would have to accede to if Obamacare funding were to go through. Approval of the XL pipeline led the list, followed by changes in regulations on coal ash, reductions in Civil Service pensions, limits on malpractice suits, an end to some greenhouse gas regulations, removing contraceptive funding — and so forth.

A newer tactic — a Ted Cruz invention borne of the shutdown — is for the House to vote a barrage of bills that restore spending on those popular attractions the closure of which angered the public. Right off it was the honor flights program which brings World War II veterans to that war’s memorial in Washington. They are now ancient — high 80s and into the 90s — so the sight of wheelchair-bound vets at the padlocked gates shamed a tone-deaf administration.

Then came a bill to restore funding to the National Institutes of Health, followed by a bill to give all furloughed workers back pay anyway. Why not just have them return to work and re-start the government?

As Republicans set about reassembling the government they had shut down, bit by bit, the Senate was painted as unreasonable for not endorsing these stopgap measures. But were they to yield, it will lessen the shutdown’s effect and serve to extend it.

The Republicans point to Obama delaying for a year the employer mandate — whereby all companies with 50-or-more employees must pay for their health insurance — and say, shouldn’t those employees get a one-year waiver, too? Acceding to business’s pleas was Obama’s colossal blunder. The administration argument is that the executive branch has some leeway as “executor” of a new and complicated law to make timing adjustments. But this law was signed three and a half years ago and employers have had more than enough time to deal with its complexities (whether employers should be forced to provide someone’s health insurance is a separate argument). Obama left himself wide open for the Republican charge of unfairness.

But their plaintive, perfectly reasonable quid pro quo to let give everyone a bye for year before they or employers have to buy insurance masks a plot, as we have said earlier. If the young are not required to buy insurance (else pay a penalty) in 2014, insurers would not have the essential income they need to offset the cost of the pre-existing condition applicants whom they must now accept. Insurance premiums would soar. Obamacare would collapse of its own weight. Republicans put on innocent faces to hide this surefire scenario behind the guise of “unfairness” but sabotage is their playbook.

Out in the public sphere, in the new paradigm of working to repeal, defund or sabotage a law you don’t like, majority rule is just an annoyance to be overwhelmed by money. The Koch brothers are behind a multi-million dollar campaign to dissuade the young from buying insurance on the just-opened exchanges. Youth-written, Koch-sponsored, “free-thinking, liberty-loving” GenerationOpportunity.org tells fellow young people to simply “Opt Out” of buying insurance and works to polarize their heads with falsehood such as in this article (compare it to what we just said about which branch of government decides how much to spend).

Life goes on despite the shutdown and Republicans are using it to make the case, as did Tennessee representative Marsha Blackburn on Fox News, that “people are probably going to realize they can live with a lot less government”. Multi-millions cushion Fox's Sean Hannity. “This doesn't impact me”, he says. The efficacy test in the new order is, if it doesn’t affect me, it can’t be harming anyone.

And self is all. There are enough votes in the House to end the impasse and move forward with a “clean resolution” that funds the government’s continuance with no attached conditions. But Boehner will not allow a vote. If he does, he fears the Tea Party faction will move to unseat him. So the shutdown of the government of the United States can be attributed to this one man wanting to keep his job.

It the President yields at all, on either the shutdown or the debt ceiling, it will be a disastrous invitation for extremists in the future to kidnap policy and issue ransom notes as a general practice, upending the majority rule that is essential to democracy. “If we get in the habit where a few folks, an extremist wing of one party, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, are allowed to extort concessions based on a threat of undermining the full faith and credit of the United States, then any president who comes after me — not just me — will find themselves unable to govern effectively,” Obama said.