At last, a budget

And a new effort to fire the Speaker

I just walked off the House floor and I’m hitting send on this email that I (mostly) wrote last night.

I couldn’t send it this morning because I wasn’t sure if the budget would actually pass - but it did.

It’s been a wild ride.

For those keeping track, the budget is six months late. We’ve come to the brink of a government shutdown five separate times, including today - and it may still happen. 

A big chunk of the government will shut down tonight at midnight unless the Senate acts with light speed to pass the bill that we just passed in the House. 

That said, if a shutdown happens, don’t fall for the flashy headlines - it will be extremely brief. The budget is a lock to pass the Senate very soon.

As a freshman member of Congress, sometimes it’s hard for me to figure out why a certain bill gets delayed or denied. There are legislative trapdoors all over the place and plenty of folks can bump a bill onto one of them and then swooop and we never hear from it again.

This was not one of those times. In this case, the scene was full of perpetrators raising their hands and gleefully confessing.

In short, the right-flank in the House withheld their support. They demanded major budget cuts in many areas (health care, education, etc.), provisions dealing with abortion, and some other culture war issues.

And they got basically none of that. There are a few programs that got some small cuts, a few others that got small boosts, but for the most part this is a non-radical budget - which is generally what you’d expect from divided government, as we currently have.

The Speaker did throw his right-flank a small bone by including a provision that clarifies that the use of gas stoves shall not be prohibited. I’m not sure anyone in Congress was ever opposed to that, but it became a media flashpoint for a few days last year, so now that’s settled.

Having received practically none of their demands, the right-flank is furious. They’re doing interviews blasting the Speaker, and I imagine they’ll continue that for the next couple of weeks.

My expectation is that the Speaker is going to respond by being polite and non-confrontational. He’s going to try and placate them to the extent possible.

But if he were being completely candid with them, here’s what I think he would say:

“You could have had so much more. This could have been a much more conservative budget. You made a bunch of demands that you knew I couldn’t meet because it would have tanked this in the Senate. So instead of trying to get as much as we could, you withheld your support, which forced me to go to the other party in the House to get the votes I needed to pass this. That meant that I had to compromise with the other party three times - once in the House, again in the Senate, and again with the White House. Which meant you got your gas stoves and that was about it.”

And remember at the top of this email how I said I wrote most of this last night? Well, here’s an update from just a few moments ago:

As expected, the right-flank is extremely upset. But one member just took it a step further and filed a motion to fire the Speaker.

Except this time, they haven’t decided to force a vote on it. A member can choose to make the motion to fire the Speaker “privileged” and then House has to vote on it within two legislative days. The motion that was just filed isn’t privileged, so it’s just going to hang out there in the wind - unless they decide to force it.

So why file the motion to fire the Speaker but not force a vote?

To torment the guy. To remind him of your leverage. And - most importantly - to grab a bunch of media attention, as this move surely will. (And sure enough, I just checked and it’s already made national headlines. Before I could even finish typing this!)

All that said, it’s still my sense that - in private - most of the right-flank is basically fine with getting nothing from their budget battle.

Most of these folks have a media agenda more than a legislative agenda, so losing legislative battles works just as well as winning them. Complaining about the Speaker will get them more attention than celebrating him, so they don’t really mind that much. Even if they try to fire him, the point wouldn’t be to actually fire him. The point is to get attention for the attempt.

Last thing, and I’ve said this before:

The new Speaker is basically acting the same way the old Speaker did. The two of them might use a different political vocabulary, but on the big, strategic stuff, there’s no real difference that I can see. I’ve talked about this with other members of Congress from both parties and that seems to be the consensus. Even though he was formerly a member of the right-flank, ascension to leadership seems to have had somewhat of a moderating effect.

Campaign update - energy and joy

Now that we’ve cast our last vote for the week, I’m jumping on a plane and flying home. I’ll say hi to Marisa and our kids, go for a long family walk, eat a meal together, then get in the car and start campaigning.

Sometimes I meet people at events who say something like, “I know this is a lot of work” or “You must be very busy.”

And that’s true, we are.

But, to be honest, I love campaigning. I love meeting people and trying to give them a more positive vision of what politics can be. There are days when it’s just plain fun. 

The time away from family is rough, but we know it has a fixed end-date: November 5th. We can make it, and until then we’re going to campaign with energy and joy.

Now that we’re past the primary, I’d love to start the next phase with a strong dose of support from all of you. Those are always great days for our team. 

You can do that here (ActBlue) or here (non-ActBlue). Both fund our campaign directly.

All the Best,

Jeff