The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

Yesterday,
the Wrongologist reported
about the 113th Congress’s 126 day work year. In truth, since there
are 110 Saturdays and Sundays in each year, the maximum that most Americans
expect to work is 255 days a year, less paid holidays and vacation, if they are
fortunate enough to get them.

But
the Congress’s work year equals just 49% of that of the average citizen. Of
course, they attend a lot of events when they are not in session in DC, but we
can only judge them by production: An update on yesterday’s post is that only 12 bills have been passed so far by
113th Congress, that is half the rate of the 112th Congress,
which as the chart in yesterday’s post showed, was the worst in history.


The Republicans argue that much of their accomplishment so far this year has been
to stop things from happening. As an example, this is “Stop Federal Abuse
Week” in the House. They are focused on the IRS. One way they will do that
is by defunding Obamacare for 40th time this week. The cool thing from their perspective
is this time they will strip the IRS of any role in Obamacare, since the IRS plays a big role in it,
particularly by enforcing the Mandate.

All of this
may sound crazy to normal people, but a Pew Survey released
yesterday tells a different story:

The Pew survey
was conducted July 17-21, 2013, among 1,480 adults, including 497 Republican
and Republican-leaning registered voters.

It found broad
dissatisfaction among GOP voters with the party’s positions on a number of
issues. And while the general sentiment is that the party should commit to more
conservative positions, two issues stand out. On abortion and gay marriage
about as many Republicans want the party to move in a more moderate direction
as support a more conservative stance:

It is interesting
that the survey results track exactly what is happening in the House right now.
The fight is building on government spending and immigration, the issues that most
conservatives feel the Congress needs to get tougher on. So, the battle lines
are drawn on the debt ceiling: Even in the Senate, a rump group of Republicans,
led by the so-called “Constitutionalists”, that is, Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand
Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) plan on blocking deals with Democrats in the
Senate, specifically by holding an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to
defunding Obamacare.

Overall, 35% of
GOP voters say that, in dealing with Democrats, congressional Republicans have
compromised too much. Slightly fewer (27%) say they have not compromised
enough, while 32% say they have handled this about right. However, 53% of the Tea
Party folks feel that they have compromised too much:

The voices that
Republicans in the House listen to the most are on the far right, as the chart
below shows, since the Tea Party has more influence on the primaries than does
the party at large, partly because of their high level of political engagement.
Overall, they are a minority (37%) of all Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents nationally. Yet they are more likely than other GOP voters to say
they always vote in primary elections; and as a result they make up about half
of the Republican primary electorate (49%). See Pew’s chart below:

This outsized
role of the Teas is also seen in the Senate. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority
leader, has been known as a deal-maker in the past, but he is afraid of being primaried
from the right by the same people in Kentucky who worked to elect Sen. Rand Paul by a large
margin. McConnell has therefore moved from being a deal maker to being an
obstructionist. The same is true for the Republican’s #2, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
the minority whip, who has had to move toward Sen. Cruz. This has opened the
door for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to return to his former status as a Senate deal maker. That
started with McCain emerging as alternate leader to McConnell during the debate
surrounding ending the 60 vote hurdle for Mr. Obama’s nominees by threatening to invoke the so-called
nuclear option. That deal was made by McCain with Sen. Schumer (D-NY) behind
McConnell’s back.

In the House, the
same is happening. Because of favorable redistricting, House Republicans have
little to worry about by not voting for a comprehensive immigration bill, so it
will die. There is a contest between the national Republican party and House
Republicans over the debt ceiling and immigration, but while House Republicans
have nothing to worry about, the National party has a lot to worry about.

The problem for
the national party is that Mr. Boehner (R-OH) is only concerned about holding onto
the House in 2014 and 2016. Another question is whether Mr. Boehner is truly in
control of his party in the House. The year started with Boehner’s fight to
keep his speakership. It wasn’t really close, but Boehner saw that he needed to
play to the far right in House. He walked away from them in the fight for Hurricane
Relief. It passed the House with a majority of Democratic votes and a minority
of Republicans voting for it. After that, the House right wing said to Boehner that
he shouldn’t bring any more bills to floor without majority Republican support
(the Hastert Rule). He has complied with that position on the Farm bill
and has said he would comply with it on Immigration.   


In summary, Mr. Boehner is not equipped to keep his people in line;
redistricting has taken away his power, since very few House Republicans perceive
any electoral threats from Democrats. Their threats are mainly from further on
the right, so there will be no compromise with the Democrats. Moreover, Mr.
Obama won only 27 Republican House districts, and there is limited threat from
him on that score.

So, the House is
now a free-for-all. It isn’t the House run by Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich, both
of whom were able to keep control of their party.

This Fall, it
could spin out of control at any time, with disastrous results for our standing
in the world.

Smell the Exceptionalism!