This is still about the debt ceiling. We’ll get to that but first there’s some historic scenery to set.
It is certain now that there are not two but three parties in the House of Representatives, probably the Senate too.
We know the two major parties. The Democratic Party, which currently has 193 members of the House, and the Republican Party, which ostensibly has 237 members (there are five vacancies since the start of this session of Congress).
But actually the highest number of votes in the Republican Caucus is 207 because 30 of the 237 call themselves the Freedom Caucus. President Trump is at war with them. But he’s late to the game.
They are not Republicans.
They camouflaged themselves as Republicans in running for the House and have come to Congress under the auspices of a Republican conspiracy born in the first two years of the Obama presidency called the Tea Party, but they are not Republicans. They use that party, hide in it, and yet refuse it their votes in the House — even for the worst, meanest conservative legislation like the defunct health bill
But they are not Republicans. Neither are they a caucus.
They are now a third political party. So let’s call them what they are, the Freedom Party. For at least 10 to 15 years we have been watching an historic U.S. political realignment akin to the 1840s/1850s, when the Whig Party came apart and the Republican Party arose. The Trump candidacy and now presidency has accelerated that by years.
This Republican Party runs a narrow spectrum from sensibly conservative members, who because they are sensible people are called moderates, to arch conservatives to crazy conservatives.
There are no moderates in the Republican Party any longer. That is a fiction. There is no one like Nelson Rockefeller, Ed Brooke, Chuck Percy, Bob Michel, or, in my state of New Jersey, Bill Cahill or Tom Kean.
There are those few sensible people among House Republicans who understand you win some, you lose some and, mostly, you compromise because that used to be the basis of government. Coming from Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states they know if they don’t seem to be sensible, they could lose to Democrats. Some may anyway now.
It is a given today that the 30 of the Freedom Party will never compromise, even with Republicans. They prove that every time they have the chance. It is makes no difference what the challenged Republican House leadership brings forward, the 30 members will vote no. They do it every time.
The Republicans control the House because the Freedom Party votes with them on that, but they cannot use the House to pass their bad laws because the Freedom Party won’t let them.
The American democratic system does not allow for this situation. We are a democracy in the form of a constitutional republic, not a parliamentary democracy.
In parliamentary systems there tend to be many parties with rarely an outright majority for any party so governments are formed by coalitions of parties with the strongest among them claiming the position of head of government – the PM in Britain, the Chancellor in Germany. There are exceptions like France, sort of a hybrid, but among first world democracies the prevalent model is parliamentary. Except here, in the U.S.
From the very beginning of our constitutional government when the first Congress took office in 1789 there have been what first were called factions and by 1801 were called parties.
The first two were the Federalists, growing out of support for the first president, George Washington, and the Democratic Republicans, who stem from the opponents of President Washington. Their first leaders were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
The Democratic Republicans ultimately became the Democratic Party during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The Federalists lasted about 30 years and were eventually succeeded by the Whig Party, which lasted about 20 years.
The Whigs too succumbed and gave way to another party born of strains of the Federalists and Whigs and some free soil Democrats.
It called itself the Republican Party starting in 1854, ran its first candidate for president, John C. Fremont in 1856 and won the presidency for the first time in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln.
In the election of 1860 the Republicans won the House for the first time. In the 78 elections for the House since 1860, Republicans won control 36 times. Democrats won the rest except that in the 65th House, Democrats they allied with progressives and socialists to control the chamber.
Otherwise, even when there has been a third party with several seats, either Republicans or Democrats have had clear control.
The third party high point came in the 63rd Congress from 1913 to 1915 when 18 Progressive Party members served in the House. They didn’t matter because there were 290 Democrats to just 127 Republicans in the other seats.
In the last four elections Republicans combined with the Freedom Party to win control. Control is one thing when you are in opposition to a Democrat in the White House. If everyone is voting no, no one notices. It’s another thing when your own party has the White House, then they notice.
The Freedom Party votes with the Republican Party to elect the speaker, who then controls committees, committee chairpersons and the agenda.
But it does not give Republicans the 216-vote majority to pass a bill because the 30 will not vote with the GOP on any legislation of any consequence as they proved on the garbage can bill called the American Health Care Act.
And their refusal absolutely applies to any bill to raise the debt ceiling, against which the Freedom Party has voted unanimously every time it comes up.
So the Freedom Party will block any tax legislation or an infrastructure program if those are ever introduced as bills in the Congress — although there is hardly a chance either will occur.
But one thing the House has to vote on soon is the debt ceiling. It can’t be avoided. The Freedom Party will not give Republicans their votes to do that. They have voted no on it every time. Of course, as noted in Part I of this review, two thirds of all Republicans consistently voted no on that question.
It seems therefore certain the Republican Party cannot get a debt-ceiling raise done this time even if it wants to do so.
So where will Speaker Ryan look for the votes to raise the debt ceiling? From the same place it has come the past seven years. From the 193 Democrats in the House.
Why should Democrats do that again when the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House?
What will Democrats get in return for voting to raise the debt ceiling to keep the U.S. in business, when they always get in return campaigns that then accuse them of increasing the debt and being spendthrifts?
What should they get this time if they push all their chips – 193 votes — into the middle of the table to save the United States from defaulting on its debt? That’s called leverage and Democrats have a lot of it. In fact they have all of it in the House.
Well here is a menu of things they could think about asking for since they constitute 90 percent of a working majority and only need 23 sensible Republicans to join them to do what has to be done.
- Resignation of Paul Ryan as Speaker in favor of a Democrat and full control of the House.
- Chairmanships of some or all committees, including particularly Ways and Means, Appropriations, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence.
- Agreement if there is a further Supreme Court vacancy during this session of Congress that no nominee will be considered – the GOP Senate has to be part of this because it can’t raise the debt ceiling on its own and it also needs lots of Democratic votes to do it.
- Legislation to raise the debt ceiling annually automatically in the future subject to receipt of an annual report on the status of the national debt by the Department of the Treasury.
- Anything else Democrats want.
Soon enough we’ll see what happens when the House Republicans have to wear the mantle of responsibility, have to put up or shut up; have to keep the government of the United States open — or shut it down.
Peeling the Onion 