“I’ll buy you a Coke Zero if you can tell me what the government shutdown was about in ’95,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who was among the raucous House freshmen then. “What was the issue? Nobody remembers!”
Previous Congresses and administrations managed to find a way out of their own conflagrations. In fact, the last major shutdowns, in late 1995 and early 1996, paved the way for sweeping bipartisan compromises, including tax and budget changes that both Congressional Republicans and President Bill Clinton were pleased to call their own.
The entire exercise solidified a pattern of high-pressure, low-skill budget showdowns for the next generation, but a sinewy economy made it all seem O.K.
“It’s easy to look back and say it was all planned that way,” said Leon E. Panetta, Mr. Obama’s former defense secretary and Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff during the shutdowns. “But I have to tell you, it was a day-to-day crisis, and you never quite knew what the hell was going to happen.”
Whether those stuck in some Congressional fiscal jam in 2033 will study 2013 for lessons on how a divided Washington finally pulled back from the brink with a last-minute compromise or engaged in a meltdown that harmed the economy and ended careers is yet to be determined. But in many ways, Washington of today feels a lot like 1995-96, when the government shut down twice over the course of a month.
Then, as now, partisan rancor over federal spending burned hotly. Congressional Republicans complained bitterly about the Democratic president, jabbing at him for playing too much golf and opposing military action in a factionalized foreign land.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, then on a lower rung of leadership, was tormented by House freshmen who were trying to use spending agreements to undo social policy, lamenting that “you can’t bring about this much change without a lot of listening and hand-holding.”
Partisan divides over the role and scope of government are even deeper now, with the procedures of government thrown into such chaos that Republican senators took to the floor last week to offer something close to a comedy roast of one of their own, Ted Cruz of Texas. The lessons of the Clinton-era deadlock, which damaged the Republican Party while restoring a weakened president, may be elusive.
Unlike this Congress, both chambers then were ruled by one party, which worked in concert, at least in the beginning, to undermine a president who, unlike Mr. Obama, was up for re-election. Mr. Clinton engaged in daily castigations of Congress while keeping alive negotiations with his adversaries, two things Mr. Obama eschews.
Further, Mr. Clinton’s incipient opponent back then, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was the majority leader with a centrist agenda that is hard to find among current Senate Republicans. “It’s mind boggling,” Mr. Dole said of the current budget impasse. “The difference between then and now is the Senate said enough is enough.” (Also, no senator performed a fake filibuster as Mr. Cruz did last week. They were old-fashioned that way.)
An important structural difference exists as well: before the shutdowns of 1995-96, Congress had already passed numerous appropriations bills to finance main areas of government. Congress today has passed zero, the net result of an earmark ban (money to fix a bridge tends to be the best fixer for hurt feelings) and a divided opinion in the House and Senate over how much money the government is actually allowed to spend.
“This would be as complete a government shutdown as you can get,” said Stan Collender, a veteran federal budget expert.
Stalemates between Congress and the White House over spending have existed since the government began, but they became more severe during the 1970s, leading to an increased number of stopgap spending agreements. From that ensued increasingly protracted fights over how to fix those spending gaps, and the spending bills became proxies for other policy battles.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan, sparring with Democrats over spending, military aid to Nicaragua and other issues, initiated a shutdown of various cabinet-level agencies for a short period. President George Bush had his own fight with Congress over discretionary spending, which led to a shutdown in 1990.
In the 1996 fiscal year, which featured the two most infamous shutdowns in American history, the battle between Congress and Mr. Clinton centered principally around how to balance the budget, with a side fight over Medicare premiums that ultimately provoked the shutdown. Republicans wore lapel pins calling for a balanced budget.
The current fight over a doomed Republican plan to deprive Mr. Obama’s health care law of money, Mr. Graham said, “is about taking a legislative proposal, the signature issue of the president, and asking him to walk away from it. I just don’t see that as being the best tactic.”
In stark contrast to the current fight, the Republican game plan in the mid-1990s came from the top. The speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, fresh off a popular campaign to take over the House, led the shutdown strategy, and his members largely rallied around it. Senate Republicans, while dubious about the politics, went along for the ride.
Today, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is plagued by both his minority status and a primary challenge from the right. He has done little to bridge the gap between Republicans willing to fight to the end and those who want to move on. But the latest crop of Republican senators often seems impervious to pressure from their leaders.
It was Mr. Dole, with his presidential ambitions affirmed and his control of his conference secure, who pulled the plug on Mr. Gingrich and his revolutionaries.
Mr. Dole said his biggest regret was not moving sooner. “I think we could have ended it a day or two earlier,” he said, “because Clinton was eating our lunch.”
Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/politics/last-shutdown-a-lesson-lost-on-capitol-hill.html?partner=rss&emc=rss