SHUTDOWN: Day One

Beyond exasperation with dumb Republican tactics and failure to do their jobs, here is what I seriously think about the mess in Washington:

The Republicans are trying to use the budget process to push their other, non-budgetary priorities. I think this is very dangerous. When they first came howling into Congress in 2010, they were all fired up to cut spending and reduce the deficit. I don't agree with that focus, but at least the budget crises of 2011-2012 were actually about the budget. Because they were about the budget, they were about numbers, which means that it was possible for the two parties to reach a compromise. The sequester was dumb but it did cut spending.

Now, though, the deficit is falling rapidly, and not even Paul Ryan seems very worked up about the debt. So the Republicans have moved on to other priorities. Since they control only one house of Congress, there is little they can do in the way of passing or repealing laws through the normal process. So their strategy is to use the budget, which they have to pass, to force through other priorities. For strange reasons of internal Republican politics, they have decided to focus on repealing the Affordable Care Act. This is the President's "signature achievement," the law that he hopes with place him with Roosevelt and Johnson in the ranks of welfare state heroes. He does not want to repeal it.

How could that be compromised? It can't. The law could certainly be modified, but no big piece could simply be removed (as some Republicans have been suggesting), because all the big pieces are needed to make the whole thing work.

This is a recipe for Constitutional crisis. What the Republicans are pursuing is revolutionary. Not since before the Civil War has an American political party ever threatened to blow up the budget and the economy in pursuit of non-budgetary goals. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong -- maybe our political system is so tangled with webs of interest and influence that real change is not possible through the normal channels. If they were doing this to force an end to drone warfare and spying by the NSA, I might even support them. But nobody should mistake the radical import of their actions.

Nor should anybody forget that they are undertaking this radical departure from American politics as usual for the sole reason of denying health insurance to people who can't afford it. For that noble goal, they are threatening the constitutional fabric of our democracy.