Senate rejects rival Dem, GOP plans for reopening government
A splintered Senate swatted down competing Democratic and Republican plans for ending the 34-day partial government shutdown on Thursday, leaving President Donald Trump and Congress with no obvious formula for halting the longest-ever closure of federal agencies and the damage it is inflicting around the country. In an embarrassment to Trump that could weaken his position whenever negotiations get serious, the Democratic proposal got two more votes than the GOP plan. There were six Republican defectors, including freshman Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who’s clashed periodically with the president. There were signs lawmakers on both sides were seeking ways to resolve their vitriolic stalemate, if only temporarily. Moments after the votes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., spent a half-hour in the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and a parade of senators from both parties took to the Senate floor to advocate reopening agencies for three weeks while bargainers seek a solution. “We’re talking,” Schumer told reporters, one of the most encouraging statements either side has made since the shutdown began Dec. 22. At the White House, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump would consider signing a short-term bill “only if it includes a down payment on the wall.” For most of Thursday, both parties in conflicting ways to showed their sympathy for unpaid federal workers while yielding no ground in their fight over Trump’s demand to build a border wall with Mexico. The Senate first rejected a Republican plan reopening government through September and giving Trump the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for building segments of that wall, a project that he’d long promised Mexico would finance. The 50-47 vote for the measure fell 10 shy of the 60 votes needed to succeed. Minutes later, senators voted 52-44 for a Democratic alternative that sought to open padlocked agencies through Feb. 8 with no wall money. That was eight votes short. It was aimed at giving bargainers time to seek an accord while getting paychecks to 800,000 beleaguered government workers who are a day from going unpaid for a second consecutive pay period. Flustered lawmakers said the results could be a reality check that would prod the start of talks. Throughout, the two sides have issued mutually exclusive demands that have blocked negotiations from even starting: Trump has refused to reopen government until Congress gives him the wall money, and congressional Democrats have rejected bargaining until he reopens government. Thursday’s votes could “teach us that the leaders are going to have to get together and figure out how to resolve this,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader. He added, “One way or another we’ve got to get out of this. This is no win for anybody.” For now, partisan potshots flowed freely. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross of a “let them eat cake kind of attitude” after he said on television that he didn’t understand why unpaid civil servants were resorting to homeless shelters for food. Even as Pelosi offered to meet the president “anytime,” Trump stood firm, tweeting, “Without a Wall it all doesn’t work…. We will not Cave!” and no meetings were scheduled. As the Senate debated the two dueling proposals, McConnell said the Democratic plan would let that party’s lawmakers “make political points and nothing else” because Trump wouldn’t sign it. He called Pelosi’s stance “unreasonable” and said, “Senate Democrats are not obligated to go down with her ship.” Schumer criticized the GOP plan for endorsing Trump’s proposal to keep the government closed until he got what he wants. “A vote for the president’s plan is an endorsement of government by extortion,” Schumer said. “If we let him do it today, he’ll do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.′ The White House closely monitored the Senate votes and Trump spoke with lawmakers throughout the day. He was waiting to see if many Democrats crossed over to back his plan, but West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin proved to be the only one. In one indication the lawmakers were reaching a breaking point, Vice President Mike Pence attended a pre-vote lunch with GOP senators and heard eagerness for the standoff to end, participants said. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said their message to Pence was “Find a way forward.” In consultation with their Senate counterparts, House Democrats were preparing a new border security package they planned to roll out Friday. Despite their pledge to not negotiate until agencies reopened, their forthcoming proposal was widely seen as a counteroffer to Trump. Pelosi expressed “some optimism that things could break loose pretty soon” in a closed-door meeting with other Democrats Wednesday evening, said Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky. The Democratic package was expected to include $5.7 billion, the same amount Trump wants for his wall, but use it instead for fencing, technology, personnel and other measures. In a plan the rejected Senate GOP plan mirrored, Trump on Saturday proposed to reopen government if he got his wall money. He also proposed to revamp immigration laws, including new restrictions on Central American minors seeking asylum in the U.S. and temporary protections for immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. In another sign of hope, Thursday’s vote on the Democratic plan represented movement by McConnell. For weeks, he’d refused to allow a Senate vote on anything Trump wouldn’t sign and has let Trump and Democrats try reaching an accord. McConnell has a history of helping resolve past partisan standoffs, and his agreement to allow Thursday’s vote was seen by some as a sign he would become more forcefully engaged. At a panel discussion held by House Democrats on the effects of the shutdown, union leaders and former Homeland Security officials said they worried about the long-term effects. “I fear we are rolling the dice,” said Tim Manning, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official. “We will be lucky to get everybody back on the job without a crisis to respond to.” Reprinted with permission from the Associated Press
Daniel Sutter: For-profit government?
I recently wrote about some of the problems with civil asset forfeiture, under which our governments seize money or assets allegedly involved in criminal activity without securing a conviction. An Institute for Justice report detailing forfeiture abuses, “Policing for Profit,” suggests that there is an inconsistency between proper policing and profit. And yet politicians from Al Gore to Donald Trump have wanted to make government more business-like. Is there a conflict between good government and profit? The profit motive is enormously important in our economy. Profits are a residual, or what is left over after paying all the costs, and the owners get to keep any profit. Businesses typically must incur costs before selling and are never guaranteed a profit. Agriculture illustrates this: farmers must buy or lease land and purchase seeds, fertilizer and tractors to grow a crop. If the crop is large enough and market prices high enough, revenue will exceed cost. The farmer keeps any residual, and bears the losses. Business owners get to make decisions and keep the profit, so they should try to control costs. This marriage of decision-making authority and financial incentive drives the efficiency of business. The pursuit of profit does not mean keeping costs as low as possible, since building luxury cars and mansions can both be profitable. Car makers, though, should avoid waste in building both economy and luxury cars. No one in government can earn profits. We lose a powerful incentive. But why would, say, policing for profit, lead to problems? For asset forfeiture, we probably only want criminals deprived of their ill-gotten gains. We are not authorizing forfeiture against innocent people (including ourselves). A profit motive might lead to the targeting of innocent people (the poor, minorities) unable to legally defend their assets. Furthermore, we cannot easily tell when the police pursue forfeiture against an innocent person. The person who has $10,000 or more in cash seized from them might have just won a casino jackpot or sold a car for cash, or may be involved in the drug trade. The lack of clarity prevents us from holding the district attorney, mayor, or offending police officers accountable. Consider some other potential instances where government could make profits. Illegally parked cars should sometimes be towed, but the danger should ideally be balanced against the owner’s cost and inconvenience. The pursuit of profit makes such balancing less likely. Speed traps and red-light cameras might be used to issue tickets for marginal violations or excessive fines. Private, for-profit prisons might cut spending on food and medical care, creating cruel and unusual conditions for inmates. The lack of clarity is a common theme. Just how long was that car illegally parked? Did a prisoner given aspirin truly need surgery? We cannot tell when the lure of profit leads to excessive corner cutting. Yet many business interactions also lack clarity. A delayed flight might be due to unexpected mechanical problems, or a lack of reasonable preparations. An unforeseen design flaw or intentional disregard of safety could both be responsible for auto accidents and safety recall. Why is profit-seeking by government a bigger problem? The answer, I think, is that our dealings with any business are voluntary, while our dealings with government are compelled. If I get sick after eating at a restaurant, I can choose never to eat there again. Voluntariness also enables competition, disciplining businesses in the pursuit of profit. Businesses can find shortchanging customers on quality and service very costly. People cannot typically walk away from dealings with government, as is literally true for the person carrying cash stopped by law enforcement. Prisoners cannot boycott a private prison which they believe does not offer a humane level of care. The state officials administering a contract with a private prison are not “customers,” and may be more tolerant of poor conditions than if they were customers. Does this mean we can never beneficially make government function more like a business? No, but we must proceed very cautiously. The profit motive is a great force for efficiency when constrained by choice and competition. ••• Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.
Bradley Byrne: How we fund the government
Arguably, Congress’s most important power is the power of the purse. Through funding bills, Congress has an important opportunity to set the direction of the government. Founding Father James Madison called it “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people”. Unfortunately, in recent years, Congress has failed at this basic constitutional responsibility. For far too long, Congress has operated from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis, putting off passing government funding bills until the last possible minute. Even worse, Congress has also fallen into a bad habit of just passing short-term spending bills known as Continuing Resolutions (CR) that simply hold federal spending in place. This is exactly what happened just a few weeks ago. I voted against that bill because it’s unacceptable to operate the government in that manner. Fortunately, for the first time since 2009, the House last week passed all twelve of the individual government funding bills before the end of the fiscal year on September 30th. Only in Washington would simply doing your job be considered a major accomplishment, but this was a big breakthrough in the government funding process and it is important to enacting President Trump’s agenda. For example, our funding bills crack down on illegal immigration and fully fund President Donald Trump’s request for the border wall. The bills also roll back burdensome regulations, provide a raise to our troops, defund Planned Parenthood, cut funds to the IRS and EPA, and boost funding for medical research. While I am proud we got the job done, we still have a lot of work to do. For example, Congress has still not even passed a budget for Fiscal Year 2018 yet, and the Senate has yet to consider even a single funding bill. I want to take a minute to clarify the difference between the federal budget and the funding bills. While the terms are often interchanged, they are actually very different. The budget is more of an aspirational document that does not carry the force of law, but it serves as a blueprint for the funding bills. Even more, the budget submitted each year by the President is truly just a recommendation that Congress uses to draft our own budget. Even still, the budget is important because it sets topline spending levels and provides a more long-term budget outlook. The funding bills are where the money is actually spent. These are very specific bills that lay out line item appropriations for most government agencies and programs. The funding bills run on the fiscal year calendar, so from October 1st to September 30th each year. If the funding bills are not passed before September 30th, a government shutdown occurs. When the process works like it is supposed to, the president submits his budget request in February, the House and Senate pass budget resolutions by the middle of the year, and then pass the twelve individual funding bills by September 30th. We must return to this process. When the system is broken, as it currently is, it makes it much harder to set federal priorities and cut down on wasteful or unnecessary government programs. This is why I think it is so important we return to regular order and get our work done on time. I understand it is difficult to make spending decisions in today’s tight budget environment, but the American people elected us to make difficult choices. While I’m glad the House got our work done this year, we must keep pushing to fix the overall process and restore fiscal sanity in Washington. • • • Bradley Byrne is a member of U.S. Congress representing Alabama’s 1st Congressional District.
Martha Roby: A better way to govern
It’s no secret that many Americans believe our country has lost its way. A recent Bloomberg poll showed as many as 68 percent feel the United States is heading in the wrong direction. That is a very high number, suggesting the dissatisfaction with our nation’s trajectory defies partisan, demographic or geographic lines. Across a range of issues from the economy and national security to health care and taxes, people have lost confidence in where we are heading. And, while electing a new president in November will certainly change the landscape one way or another, I believe Congress has a responsibility to lead with its own ideas rather than watching (or complaining) from the sidelines. That’s why House Republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, have come forward with an agenda of forward-thinking policy measures meant to communicate clearly and directly with the American people our plan for the future. It’s called “A Better Way,” and it is our blueprint for using responsible, conservative policy ideas to restore a confident America. Here are the basics: Poverty: Fifty years after “The Great Society,” our welfare system isn’t working. Too many families who depend on the government for help wind up trapped in poverty for generations. Our vision is to reward work, rather than replacing it, while enhancing job training efforts that offer more Americans the skills they need to get jobs and build self-sufficiency. The Economy: American families are feeling the squeeze of rising costs for goods and services without a rise in incomes to meet it. We believe a smarter approach to regulations can allow job-creating small businesses to thrive while also offering the protections we expect. Tax Reform: Probably the quickest way to improve economic conditions for all Americans is to deliver a simpler, fairer, flatter tax code. Our plan would not just lower taxes, but make them more workable for families, more competitive for American businesses and better-aimed at jumpstarting job growth. National Security: The security of the American people must always be our first priority. Our military and law enforcement agencies do tremendous work to keep us safe, but we believe we can enact better policies to support their efforts. Our vision is renewing the commitment to defeating radical Islamic terrorism overseas, securing our borders and stopping cyber attacks here at home, and bolstering global American influence through strong foreign policy that restores our geo-political leadership. Constitutional balance: While it might not make the news every day, the slow erosion of the Constitutional separation of powers is a real threat to our government as Americans have known it for more than 200 years. Congress must reassert its Constitutional authority, and make policy and spending decisions more transparent and accountable to people we represent. Health Care: I don’t know how high health care costs have to rise to make it plainly obvious that Obamacare hasn’t worked. We believe patient-centered reforms based on free market principles that deliver more choices, lower costs and more flexibility to consumers are a much better way. These are mere snapshots of much more substantial policy ideas. I encourage you to read the full “Better Way” agenda online at www.Better.gop. ••• Martha Roby represents Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her husband, Riley, and their two children.
Daniel Sutter: The convention center bubble
Government can importantly help create the conditions under which enterprise and entrepreneurship flourish. The required tasks include protecting property and contract rights, regulating sensibly, and efficiently providing valued public services. Whether active investment of tax dollars in selected enterprises helps grow the economy remains a matter of debate. Recently I wrote about public investment in professional sports stadiums, where billions have been spent, primarily benefiting players and team owners. America has also experienced a government-driven boom for convention and exhibit halls, as detailed in Convention Center Follies by Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. First, let’s consider the magnitude of the boom. Exhibit hall space across the nation nearly doubled between 1989 and 2011, to more than 70 million square feet. City and state governments spent $13 billion on centers between 2002 and 2011, a period of stagnation in the convention business. The convention center boom has occurred in cities both large and small, and in both the Sunbelt and Rustbelt. Alabama’s four largest cities all have centers, along with Dothan, Gadsden and Ozark. Professor Sanders documents how the rationale for public funding has changed over time. The first public auditoriums in the 1920s provided places for large public gatherings that might not make money. Such auditoriums served a reasonable public purpose. The rationale is now growing the local economy. Convention centers can provide what local economic developers crave, dollars from outside of the community. Out-of-town convention attendees spend on event registration, hotel rooms, restaurants, and so on. Their spending benefits hotels and restaurants, and then sets off a multiplier effect when these businesses and their employees spend the money. Prestigious consulting firms provide precise forecasts of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending and thousands of jobs that convention centers will create. Only reality has consistently fallen short of promises, as Professor Sanders documents. For instance, expansion of the Civic Plaza and construction of a 1,000 room convention center hotel was forecast to bring Phoenix 375,000 visitors a year. Two years after completion, convention attendance was less than half of the forecast, and the hotel could not make its bond payments. As Sanders writes, “Almost every convention center in the U.S. operates at a loss, not even counting the annual debt cost.” Visitor taxes imposed on hotels and rental cars typically fund construction of convention center projects. I recently wrote about how such taxes can be exported and are portrayed as a costless way to make outsiders fund convention centers (and sports stadiums). But as Professor Sanders emphasizes, the tax dollars could be used to improve schools, repair roads, or pay for other public services. Voters across the country have frequently turned down convention center proposals. San Diego voters rejected three proposals, voters in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, each did so twice, and proposals went down in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh. But convention center politics has evolved to eliminate voters from the approval process. End runs have been accomplished by turning to states for funding and creating special purpose authorities to impose visitor taxes and issue bonds. Why have we seen such poor investment by governments? Professor Sanders identifies the owners of the properties (hotels, restaurants and shops) frequented by attendees are located as the driving force. This illustrates how the benefits of many state and local government economic development projects are highly localized. Government is supposed to protect property from physical invasion, not protect or raise the market value of any person’s property. Consequently, convention centers exemplify crony capitalism, or the use of government to provide benefits to favored business interests. State and local governments have spent billions of tax dollars building millions of square feet of underutilized exhibit space. Convention centers, after sports stadium subsidies, represent a second strike against government economic development. Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. Respond to him at dsutter@troy.edu and like the Johnson Center on Facebook.
Angi Stalnaker: Break government logjam, so great ideas get through
The Alabama Constitution is the longest of its kind in the world. No other state and no other nation has a governing document that comes close to ours in its sheer volume. Yet, in all of its 117,000 words, it only specifies one absolute duty of the Legislature and that’s to pass a balanced budget. This year, that budget is in dire straits and the fact that there is a severe shortage of revenue is a fact that nearly all elected officials can agree on. The political divide appears when the discussion of solutions to the state’s fiscal woes enters the conversation. Some promote taxes and some advocate for more cuts to General Fund agencies. Some argue more can be cut and others insist that further cuts would be disastrous and would prohibit our state from adequately providing basic services. The correct answer is unclear but one thing is for sure, if you want the truth, go to the source and nobody has done that. More than 25,000 hardworking Alabamians are employed by the state of Alabama. They are each witnesses to the everyday processes of state government. Most of them see things every day that are wasteful or inefficient. Many of them have ideas on ways that things could be changed to make government operate more efficiently and to save precious taxpayer dollars. The problem is that the layers of government are so plentiful that it is difficult for many state employees to express their ideas to a decision maker and then even more difficult to get real change enacted. Government operates on inertia and the idea of doing something a certain way because that is the way it has always been done is standard operating procedure at most levels. These desperate budget times mandate a change in that mindset and that will require elected officials and decision makers to go to the source for revenue savings. State employees haven’t had a raise since before Auburn won a National Championship. The last time they saw a real salary increase, Barack Obama was still a U.S. senator. Yet, in all that time, nobody has gone to this group of eyewitnesses to everyday government and asked them how to operate more efficiently and effectively. It’s time to ask state employees for their ideas to cut costs and operate more efficiently and reward them for it. Launch a website and ask current state employees to submit their ideas and, if an idea is instituted, give that employee a one-time bonus equal to 5 percent of the savings accrued by their idea in the first year. Ideas will come in. Some will be feasible and some won’t be. The submitted ideas may only save a few million dollars or there could be tens of millions of taxpayer dollars saved. We will never know until we go to the source. Angi Horn Stalnaker is founder of Virtus Solutions, a government relations and communications firm.
