idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Realistically, there are enough Republican detractors that a standard budget bill would pass as soon one was allowed to be voted on.
So it's really just a game of how long it takes to get Boehner to crack and send the general budget bill through a committee that won't kill it on sight.
Hard to say how this goes though. This is not the same as 1996. Back then, it was a standard budget fight, with both sides a bit off, and the GOP chose to shut down the government instead of passing some kind of continuing resolution while they ironed out the differences. While this looks similar at first glance, there are key differences. Back then, the view was that the GOPs objective was to shut the government down, refusing to even pass a temporary resolution, while Clinton and the Democrats appeared to be doing everything they could to get an agreement reached. This time around, we're in a situation where the Dems have failed to even attempt to pass a budget for 4 years, and the GOP has allowed a long series of continuing resolutions to keep the government functioning without a budget. You can hardly say they haven't been patient or given this enough time. It's been 4 years of no budget agreement, so it's hard to sell the argument that the GOP is refusing to give the Dems enough time.
Also, unlike Clinton, Obama is being incredibly (and probably foolishly) vocal about taking an absolute stance on this. So instead of looking like someone trying to come to a reasonable agreement, he's looking like he's the reason no agreement is being reached.
I'll also point out that this has to do with more than just Obamacare. That's the low hanging obvious fruit here, but the bigger issue is about a lack of budget process for so long that there has been no ability to do anything about spending. Obamacare just happens to represent a law that is already publicly unpopular and represents new spending that can't be offset or adjusted without going through a yearly budget process and thus will increase our yearly deficits even more if something isn't done. Normally, Congress goes though this each year and looks at the mandated program expenses, and what they'd like to do with discretionary funds, takes into account likely revenue, and then comes up with a spending plan to attempt to keep expenses somewhat in line with revenues. Without that negotiating process, there's no method to keep costs in line, which is at least part of the reason our deficits remain high. The Dems have passed laws increasing our costs, but have not allowed a budget process to account for those new expenses (likely because they know it'll mean lost funding for other things).
What's interesting is that the GOP has an opportunity here to change that. Since we've been operating with continuing resolutions for years now, what they can do is just address the spending issues that the people are most upset about and pass emergency resolutions to fund them one at a time. They did this with military spending, but they could do this with other things as well. Basically, they could require each and every thing that gets funded to be justified via public need. If they do it right, they could make themselves look quite good doing this. Obama gives a speech about how the shutdown is hurting some group everyone agrees shouldn't be hurt. GOP in the house passes a spending bill to fund just that thing. Dems in the Senate can't *not* pass this or they look like they're hurting those people. Similarly, Obama can't *not* sign that bill.
Do this selectively and one portion at a time, and you could fund just the "necessary" parts of the Federal government, and the GOP could accomplish something they could never do with the normal budgetary process: Trim the government by a significant degree. Cause let's face it. There are a lot of things we spend money on that aren't necessary, and would be hard to get public outrage over not being funded. Many of these things are the same things that the GOP has wanted to defund for decades now. So it's a potential big win for them if it works out this way.
Course, they might just fold if things look too bad. There's a lot of factors that will affect what they do. But I really do think that Liberals are being far too dependent on the assumption that the public at large will see this the same way they saw the 1996 shutdown. It's not going to be the same. Heck. If for no other reason than we're too far out from elections (and they're midterms). The last one happened right in the middle of the presidential primary season, so it became a part of the presidential race. That's not going to happen in this case.