A big question in the looming double economic-political crises of the Republican House-engineered government shutdown and a feared Republican House-engineered default on the debt ceiling is: does House Speaker John Boehner have a limit in how far he’ll go in being head of House Republicans if it clashes with the national interest? There are signs he does: the New York Times reports that he has told GOPers he won’t let the national default on its debts.
He has told them he won’t stick to the so-called “Hastert rule” which Republicans cite as if its a religious mantra — named after former House Speaker Denny Hastert how says the rule “never existed.” So GOPers are following a rule they say exists that he says never was reality.
With a budget deal still elusive and a deadline approaching on raising the debt ceiling, Speaker John A. Boehner has told colleagues that he is determined to prevent a federal default and is willing to pass a measure through a combination of Republican and Democratic votes, according to multiple House Republicans.
One lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Boehner had indicated he would be willing to violate the so-called Hastert Rule if necessary to pass a debt-limit increase. The informal rule refers to a policy of not bringing to the floor any measure that does not have a majority of Republican votes.
A spokesman for Mr. Boehner pushed back on the idea that the speaker would try to pass a debt-limit increase mainly with Democratic votes, but acknowledged that the speaker understood the need to head off a default.
“The speaker always, always prefers to pass legislation with a strong Republican majority,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner.
“The speaker has always been clear that a default would be disastrous for our economy,” Mr. Steel said. “He’s also been clear that a ‘clean’ debt hike cannot pass the House. That’s why the president and Senate Democrats should drop their ‘no negotiations’ stance, and work with us on a plan to raise the debt limit in a responsible way, with spending cuts and reforms to get our economy moving again and create jobs.”
It is conceivable that Mr. Boehner could pass a debt-limit increase with a slim majority of Republican votes, and Democrats making up the difference, as he has in the past on budget measures. In meetings with Republican lawmakers, the speaker appeared to be offering reassurances to members worried about the government shutdown that he would not allow a default to take place.
Other Republicans also said Thursday that they got the sense that Mr. Boehner would do whatever was necessary to ensure that the country did not default on its debt.[New York Times]
Tea Party linked House members and some talk show hosts have said that if Boehner violated the “Hastert rule” he would deserve to be replaced as House speaker. Here’s what Hastert told The Daily Beast about the rule named after him:
There’s been a lot said in recent days about the so-called Hastert Rule. It is cited as the main reason why House Speaker John Boehner won’t allow a vote to fund the government with no Obamacare strings attached—under the rule, no legislation can be brought to the floor without a majority of Republican votes. But the rule’s namesake, former House speaker Denny Hastert, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, “The Hastert Rule never really existed. It’s a non-entity as far as I’m concerned.”
He explained that at the 2006 press conference where he is credited with instituting the rule, he was speaking generally and philosophically. A reporter asked if Hastert, who was having trouble getting an immigration reform bill out of committee and building support in the GOP conference, couldn’t get Democrats to work with him. The genial speaker replied that relying on the other party for the bulk of votes is “something I would not generally do,” a fairly benign statement, as he remembers it now, that appears to have morphed into an ironclad rule. “Generally speaking, I needed to have a majority of my majority, at least half of my conference. This wasn’t a rule. I was speaking philosophically at the time…The Hastert Rule is kind of a misnomer.”
Hastert stopped short of saying Boehner should waive the Hastert Rule. “John doesn’t talk to me,” he said. “John has his own circles, and he doesn’t reach out. That’s his nature.” The two men served in the House together when Newt Gingrich was speaker. After Gingrich stepped down, Hastert was the consensus choice of House Republicans to take the top job; he was seen as a healing figure after the contentious Gingrich years.
A former high school wrestling coach, hardworking and plainspoken, he was a refreshing change after Gingrich’s grandiosity. “The real Hastert Rule is 218,” he said, referring to the number of votes needed to pass legislation. “If we had to work with Democrats, we did,” he said. Still, he added that he couldn’t recollect ever having to rely on Democratic votes the way Boehner would if he put legislation before the House to fund the government without the restrictions much of his caucus demands.
Hastert is the longest-serving Republican speaker in history, holding the position from 1998 until 2007, when the Democrats took back the majority. He said he never took a bill to the floor unless he was sure it had the requisite 218 votes….[The Daily Beast]
In addition to the pressures Boehner is facing from Tea Party conservatives, talk show hosts and conservative writers, he’s also facing pressures from (remaining) Republican moderates and reportedly from Republican donors as well who are not happy about the shutdown and don’t want to see default. Meanwhile, Republican Govenors are keeping a distance from the shutdown and some of them — conservative and more moderate ones — have been critical of the shutdown.
—Sandi Behrns on Alan Colmes’ site:
And there you have it, folks. The ‘leverage’ Republicans claim to have is a smoke screen. Yes, they did prove fool-hardy enough to shut down the government, but to them that’s a political gamble more than an economic one. In terms of damage to the country, defaulting on the debt would be much more grievous. Fortunately, that’s not going to happen.
In a sane world, Boehner would go ahead and throw out the Hastert rule to move a clean continuing resolution through the House and end the shutdown. Unfortunately, there’s still some political posturing to play out on that one.
Also in a sane world, this news would bolster Democratic vows to not negotiate. But we’ll have to hold our breath a bit to see how that goes. Reports surfaced last night that Boehner and Rep. Paul “Throw Gramma From A Cliff” Ryan are working hard to roll the budget fight and debt ceiling up into a larger push for a “grand bargain”. These words have proven dangerously tantalizing to President Obama in the past. Here’s hoping he resists the sirens’ lure this time
Asked about this development, White House spokesman Jay Carney responded skeptically. He told reporters Thursday afternoon that Republican leaders have long said they would not allow a default but that they “flirted with default” in 2011, hurting the economy by triggering a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. Carney also noted that a Boehner spokesman reiterated “the same list of demands” that the GOP has been making all along.
In a series of small-group meetings in his office suite, Boehner has told fellow Republicans that he will not permit a vote on a “clean” short-term spending bill that does not end or delay parts of the new federal health-care law. But the aides indicated that Boehner is willing to risk infuriating some of the most conservative House GOP lawmakers by relying on a majority of Democratic votes — and less than a majority of Republicans — to pass a debt-ceiling increase.
Doing so would reprise a strategy that ensured passage earlier this year of measures to avert another fiscal impasse, to renew the Violence Against Women Act and to provide federal relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Such a maneuver in effect would suspend the so-called “Hastert Rule,” an unwritten governing principle of Republican House speakers since the 1990s when the chamber has been under GOP control. Under the rule, the speaker will not allow a floor vote on a bill that is not supported by a majority of Republicans.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel would not confirm the details of the speaker’s conversations with members in recent days, but he said Boehner has always believed that defaulting on the federal debt must be avoided.
Obviously, what Boehner’s spokesman is saying publicly and what Boehner is supposedly saying behind closed doors can’t both be true. But if Boehner plans to rely on Democrats to raise the debt limit, a clean debt limit increase is exactly what he’s going to get, and that means if the reports of what he’s saying privately are accurate, then Boehner is effectively admitting that he intends to fold his debt limit bluff. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t necessarily mean Boehner will follow through, because it wasn’t that long ago that Boehner said he wasn’t going to shut down the government because he’d rather have a standoff over the debt limit.
More broadly, what seems to be going on here is that this is Boehner’s “big give,” as one Dem aide put it to me sarcastically. Boehner is signaling flexibility in the sense that he just may be willing to give Dems the “clean” debt ceiling increase they want, but only in a larger context where Dems will be expected to make concessions in exchange for keeping the government open. In other words, whether or not Boehner ends up being open to a “clean” debt ceiling vote, the larger picture will remain that Democrats will still have to hand over a series of concessions in exchange for GOP cooperation in returning us to something resembling governing normalcy.
So in one sense, this isn’t much of a concession. On the other hand, the mere fact that Boehner sees a need to telegraph nominal flexibility to begin with could be a key tell. With Obama warning that Wall Street should take the possibility of default seriously, Boehner seems to see a need to underscore, again, that he will not allow default under any circumstances, and that keeping alive any doubts about this is politically untenable. Dems will look at this and probably only be even more encouraged to hold to a hard line on both the government shutdown and the debt limit. Boehner’s trial balloon is also useful in the sense that it makes the glaring absurdity that’s always been at the heart of his position even more glaringly absurd.
—Slate’s Matt Yglesias says Boehner’s position has, in fact, NOT changed:
Boehner’s position, dating back to 2011, has been twofold. On the one hand he says that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be catastrophic and that he favors avoiding catastrophe. On the other hand he says that he requires unrelated public policy concessions in order to agree to a measure that he himself says he supports.
It is, in other words, the classic suicide hostage strategy: Do what I want or I’ll detonate the bomb strapped to my chest. This has always been Boehner’s position. Is it credible? I don’t think so, but my confidence level is relatively low. Is it a morally acceptable way for a statesman to conduct himself? Absolutely not. Is it different from what he’s been saying all along? Nope.
It’s a relief that Boehner doesn’t intend to carry the country over a cliff. It’s surprising that conditions inside the House GOP conference have gotten so bad that members are willing to completely undercut Boehner’s negotiating position by revealing that he won’t hurt the hostage.
I suppose from here on out it’s just theater; how viciously will Republicans go after one another?
GO HERE for more blog commentary.
UPDATE II: The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has always been a solid blogger and reporter and he provides this useful context:
To the White House, the shutdown/debt ceiling fight is quite simple, and quite radical: Republicans are trying to create a new, deeply undemocratic pathway through which a minority party that lost the last election can enact an agenda that would never pass the normal legislative process. It’s nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn’t going to let it happen.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.