Another September, another federal government shutdown?
In “September,” Earth, Wind & Fire sang of “changing the minds of pretenders” and said there “never was a cloudy day.” That must have been the Septembers before Republicans regularly threatened to shut down the federal government.
They did so in September 2013 in a futile attempt to kill Obamacare. They’re threatening to do it again in September 2015, this time in a futile attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz and the most conservative House members can cite principle all day, but there are only two ways this plays out and either way they lose. The rest of Congress could pass a continuing resolution that keeps the government funded. Or Cruz and the gang could get the shutdown they crave, drive Republican approval numbers lower, then watch their party capitulate to a deal that still funds Planned Parenthood. That’s what happened with the Obamacare-related shutdown two Septembers ago.
A shutdown over Planned Parenthood would be foolish for at least three reasons.
It’s shuttering nearly the entire federal government over, as the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham points out, one 5000th of the budget.
A CNN/ORC poll showed that 71 percent of respondents oppose a shutdown over Planned Parenthood and only 22 percent support it. Even a majority of conservatives agreed. So it’s a political loser.
Most importantly, a shutdown would be a drag on the economy and would rattle global markets at a delicate time. It would kill jobs, furlough hundreds of thousands of federal workers and put a dent in your 401(k).
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Thursday called on Congress to avoid a shutdown because of the effect it would have on the economy. The last one reduced GDP by $24 billion, S&P says. “We have a good recovery in place that is really making progress. To see Congress take actions that would endanger that progress – I think that would be quite unfortunate,” Yellen said.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether Planned Parenthood deserves federal funding. We think it does because it provides vital health care for nearly 3 million women a year – and prevents hundreds of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and therefore many abortions. The House voted mostly on party lines Friday to defund it. Whether that vote will satiate the far right will be revealed in coming days.
In the meantime, House Republicans in North Carolina are breaking their own chamber’s rules to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. State Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, drove an amendment at the last minute that wasn’t a part of either the House or Senate budgets previously. House Rule 44(b) prohibits adding completely new provisions without having them go through committee – and this one didn’t. Rob Schofield at N.C. Policy Watch points out that Stam has historically railed against exactly this kind of practice.
Stam knows he’s breaking the rules. And Cruz knows he can’t win. But this September, there’s no changing the minds of the pretenders.
This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Another September, another federal government shutdown?."