Shutdown / Impeachment

And Bill Nye, science guy

Shutdown / Impeachment

You haven’t heard from me for a few weeks because we weren’t in session and there wasn’t much to tell you.

Now we’re back, and the news is that we’re still headed for a government shutdown - but also, it appears, a presidential impeachment.

Here’s how it happened:

The day we all returned last week, one of the leaders of the right-flank gave a big speech on the House floor. He directed his speech to the Speaker.

To paraphrase, he said, “Hey Mr. Speaker, if you pass a budget we don’t like, we’ll fire you. Our faction has the votes to end your speakership and we’re getting very close to doing it.”

But what he really meant was:

“Look, we know you have to pass a budget this year. And most of us in the right-flank aren’t going to vote for it, which means you’ll need some Democratic votes to pass it. And that’s going to make us furious. So you have to give us something we really want before that happens, or we’ll fire you when it does.”

What the right-flank wants most right now is a shutdown. Why? Because a shutdown comes with a ton of media attention, and for many of them, media attention is the whole ballgame.

The Speaker has tried multiple times to talk them out of it. Behind closed doors, he’s been very candid that he believes a shutdown could backfire and hurt their party in the next election. To no avail. Apparently they really want to touch the stove, so we’re all expecting it.

But last week, it also became clear to the Speaker that indulging his right-flank in a shutdown wouldn’t be enough. They wanted something more:

Impeachment.

The Speaker didn’t want to give them that, but over a 48-hour period he decided he had no choice. In an effort to keep his right-flank from engaging in open revolt, he made the tactical decision to concede to them on impeachment.

When he announced it to the press, he framed it as merely starting an “impeachment inquiry,” but if you fast-forward to the end of the inquiry, no matter what it turns up, if the Speaker tries to avoiding proceeding with a full impeachment his right-flank will just threaten to fire him again, and I expect he’d concede again. So on this issue, taking the first step is likely making the decision to also take the last one.

To sum it all up, the Speaker is trying to trade his right-flank a shutdown and an impeachment in exchange for being allowed to pass a budget. It’s unclear whether they’re going to accept his offer. My bet is they ask for even more. 

“So Jeff, why doesn’t the Speaker just make a deal with the Democrats to give him the votes he needs to remain Speaker so we’re not all beholden to the right-flank?” 

Because the Speaker isn’t open to a deal like that. Why not? Because if he made that deal, it would be an extraordinarily unpopular thing for him to do within his party - and not just with his right-flank. His support among Republicans could plummet well beyond the capacity of the minority party to realistically make up the difference. Maybe he’ll decide to roll those dice at some point, but he’s not there yet.

There’s going to be a lot of action on the shutdown front this week. Next week’s update could be pretty wild.

My experiment on Bill Nye, science guy

Here’s a real conversation I had with my staff a few weeks ago:

“Um, congressman, Bill Nye would like to meet.”

“Bill Nye, the science guy?”

“Yes.”

“Wants to meet with me?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Here. Your office.”

“Why?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Ok, well, of course, yeah, let’s do that.”

So today was the day. Sure enough, Bill Nye stopped by.

What he didn’t expect was that, for the occasion, I decided to conduct a small experiment - on him.

I asked my staff to get some beakers. I then arranged them prominently on my desk. 

The experiment was to determine whether Bill Nye would be able to resist noticing, commenting on, and handling the beakers. 

My hypothesis was that he would not, in fact, be able to resist.

So he stepped into my office and immediately said, “Hey, what’s up with the beakers?”

I said, “I just put them there to make you feel comfortable.”

We had our meeting. He’s a big advocate for space exploration, I’m on the space subcommittee, and he wanted to talk to me about a really cool upcoming NASA mission where we’re going to land a spacecraft on Mars, retrieve the soil samples taken by the rover, and bring them back to Earth. He was every bit the delightful person you’d expect.

As we were wrapping up, he pointed to the beakers and said, “You know, I’ve got some ice tea. We could pour it into one of those beakers. It wouldn’t explode… but it would be cool.”

I said, “Absolutely. Let’s do it.”

So we did. And we got a great picture. And I can’t share it with you because it was taken in my office and there are rules against taking photos on Capitol grounds and putting them in newsletters like this.

But not to worry, because I asked A.I. to re-create the moment, and it nailed it:

See you next week,

Jeff