Governing By Extortion

With the possible exception of the tax bill that was passed with the open admission it was solely intended to placate its rich donors, the Republicans party's legislative approach appears to be to govern by extortion. And, if you can say that the President actually has a governing strategy at all based on his almost hourly contradictory statements, that appears to be Trump's as well.

From the very start of his administration, Trump has threatened to destroy Obamacare in order to bring the Democrats to the table to negotiate an entirely new deal. Even with the failure of Obamacare repeal, Trump has continued to do everything in his power to sabotage and dismantle the ACA.

Similarly, the cancellation of the DACA program was designed to force Democrats to accept his border wall in order to extend it. Since the initial cancellation, Trump has come to agreement with the Democrats on DACA, then broken it, and then flip-flopped a few more times before being coaxed back into his extortionary position again this morning.

Republicans in Congress have taken the same approach with CHIP, refusing to fund the program in order to use it as a bargaining chip in the budget negotiations. As one GOP aide spun it, "After Democrats slammed Republicans for not caring about sick children for months, the GOP is turning the tables on Democrats with the government funding package with CHIP provisions. Democrats are faced with a choice to eat their words or support a Republican vote."

What's worse is that even when the extortion actually might actually get results, Republicans refuse to take the money and run. Instead, like every greedy extortionist, they up the ante every time the ransom is agreed to be paid.

Let's go back to 2011 when Republicans were refusing to raise the debt ceiling and creating the potential globally catastrophic default of the US Government. In response, Obama and Boehner secretly came to an agreement on the "Grand Bargain", a deal that would raise taxes on the rich in return for entitlement cuts in Medicare and Social Security and cut the deficit by over $1 trillion. But the deal was squashed by Eric Cantor and the Republican caucus in the House who refused to countenance any tax increases. So when the Republicans had a real chance for entitlement reform with only a small tax increase if you assumed the Bush tax cuts would expire as the law prescribed, they could not pull the trigger.

In the wake of that failure, the sequester, which cut $1.2 trillion from both defense and domestic spending equally over a nine year period, was passed in order to force the two parties to come up with an agreement on cutting the $1.2 trillion in a more reasonable manner than just across the board cuts. Again, Republicans refused to make that reasonable agreement because they believed that Democrats would suffer more politically from reduced domestic spending than Republicans would from curtailed defense spending. And we have been living with the sequester ever since.

Now, years later, Republican defense hawks and even many Democrats are saying that the sequester is killing military readiness and that defense needs to be fully funded. But Democrats are never going to agree to lift defense spending without some corresponding increase in domestic spending. But that compromise will never fly in the Republican caucus. So, Republicans had a chance to take on entitlements not once but twice years ago, but turned down that opportunity in a political gambit to hurt Democrats politically and are now complaining that their choice is hurting our defense.

Unfortunately for our future, Trump's extortion on DACA actually got some results. Durbin and Graham came up with a bipartisan solution that protected the Dreamers, fully funded Trump's budget request for border security, and made changes to family migration and the immigration lottery that the President had requested. And Trump's reaction was to refuse the deal he asked for, sabotage the agreement, spew racist epithets, and demand the wall be built. He couldn't take yes for an answer.

More importantly, extortion will rarely be the basis for any amicable agreement, in government or anywhere else. In the past, bipartisan deals usually involved both sides giving the other something they wanted. Shutting down DACA and refusing to fund CHIP and then offering to restore them in return for Democratic votes isn't giving Democrats anything they didn't have before. But Republicans have constantly relied on Democrats to be the adults in the room and bail them and the country out. However, now that Republicans control all the levers of government, those days may be gone because there is very little upside for Democrats helping them, especially when Democrats are feeling extorted.

Lastly, it should be noted that Republicans have been unable to pass a budget for the last two years despite controlling both houses of Congress. In addition, Republicans could have passed a budget without a single Democratic vote if they had chosen to. But, instead, they used the reconciliation process last year to try to kill Obamacare and this year to pass the tax cut to please their rich donors and now actually need to rely on Democratic votes to pass a budget.

In the end, Republicans will try to pass another short term continuing resolution with the help of Democrats. And the government will not be able to make any real plans for the future. Because it is hard to plan for the future when you are constantly engaging in extortion.