Dem
47
GOP
53
Congress is back in D.C., now crime-free due to the National Guard picking up litter. The main thing Congress has to do in September is fund the government before Oct. 1 or deal with a government shutdown. The appropriations bills can be filibustered, so there has to be bipartisan agreement in the Senate over them. Getting agreement is complicated by Donald Trump's (actually, OMB Director Russell Vought's) strategy of getting bipartisan agreement and then using a rescission bill (which can't be filibustered) to remove the parts the Democrats wanted in order to reach an agreement. Under the rescissions law, once a rescissions bill has been introduced, the president can refrain from spending money already appropriated for 45 days. If the current fiscal year ends in the 45-day period, no vote is even needed for the president to effectively impound $5 billion in foreign aid he doesn't want to spend. This is called a pocket rescission.
Democrats are furious about this, but so are some Senate Republicans, who feel that once they have made a deal with the Democrats, they ought to stick to it. Vought has no such concerns. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said: "Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law." This time, it was Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) who was concerned: "As a matter of process, I think it's the right thing to have the appropriations process do their work." Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called the rescissions "unlawful." She tweeted: "Congress alone bears the constitutional responsibility for funding our government, and any effort to claw back resources outside of the appropriations process undermines that responsibility." Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said she didn't know if rescissions were legal or not but she urged Trump to leave Congress alone to do its work. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD): "Anything that gives our Democrat colleagues a reason not to do the bipartisan appropriations process is not a good thing. If they can use that as an excuse, that causes us a problem." Of course, members of Congress often take strong principled positions and then when Trump calls, it's suddenly: "Of course, Mr. President, I will do whatever you tell me to do, sir."
The Democrats' only weapon now is to block the appropriations bills. Grassroots organizations are livid at how the Democrats caved on last year's bills in March and want them to fight now. They simply don't trust anyone.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) summed up the Democratic senators' problems after she got back from a tour of rural Nevada. She said: "As I'm home and I'm talking about it, most Americans, they don't understand, and rightfully so, procedure that happens in the Senate. They don't understand what it means at the end of the day, but they do know that they want their elected leaders to work on solving problems, not creating them, and not making their lives any harder." We don't know if she tried a simple message like: "All the Republicans care about is giving billionaires tax cuts, so the government has no money left for your health care. Democrats don't want this. That's why we fight with them and nothing gets done."
Rachael Bade, Politico's Capitol bureau chief, thinks the Democrats can't win this one. She expects that if the Democrats block the appropriations bills, the Republicans will hold vote after vote and the public will come to think it is the Democrats who are causing trash to pile up in the National Parks and government services to be put on hold. She also thinks that many Republicans are quite happy with the government being shut down and will be in no hurry to restart it. This is not the ideal way to shrink the government so it can be drowned in the bathtub, but in a pinch it will do. Also, what is the Democrats' exit strategy if the Republicans refuse to budge? After 3 months of shutdown and possibly a recession, the Democrats will just cave. That will be the worst of all possible worlds: Putting the country through months of pain and in the end getting nothing while strengthening Trump's grip on Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) may see it this way from the start, and just cave right off the bat to avoid this, thus infuriating the Democratic base even more.
Of course, Congress could pass a stop-gap continuing resolution and kick the can down the road, but that would just move the problem to Christmas, then to Presidents' Day, then to Easter, then to Memorial Day before the Democrats cave. (V)