At the end of the day, a big budget agreement that passes both the House and Senate is pretty unlikely. But before it can happen, there have to be negotiations, and before there are negotiations, Republicans have to allow themselves to negotiate.
In the Senate, what’s holding that up is an effort on the part of the tea party backed members to block formal negotiations until Democrats agree that the debt limit will be off limits — so that in the event the chambers do finalize a budget, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and other Republicans can still demand concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit later this year. After four years of blistering Democrats for not passing a budget, this has an unwanted downside of making the party look terrible. And now Republican frustrations with Cruz’s and Paul’s tactics are bubbling to the surface.
This is like Christmas for Democrats. Watch the video in that post if you don’t believe me.
Either Republicans kill the budget process and own all of the subsequent brinksmanship, particularly over the debt limit, or they have to discipline these freshmen and incur the wrath of the notoriously passive GOP base voters.
Thus the obvious course of action for Democrats is to do… nothing! Or rather, nothing other than to continue pressing for formal negotiations and letting this internal fight continue to play out in public until either one faction wins or the debt limit fight supersedes it.
In theory, Democrats could force the issue by introducing a legislative motion to appoint conferees. John McCain and Susan Collins’ comments today suggest they’d have the votes for it. But it would also precipitate a vote-a-rama almost nobody in either party really wants to endure simply for the purposes of doing what should be automatic. And even if that weren’t a problem, why should Democrats intervene to rescue the GOP from Cruz and Paul?
