Shutdown Winners & Losers

The US government has shut down for who knows how long, so I thought I'd do a post-shutdown recap of the last 24-48 hours.  I'll look at the key parties one by one, and give my $.02 on how they fared.

President Trump: Trump would have gotten a boost if he had allowed Congress to do its job, but (like he has before) he shot himself in the foot.  He nearly had a bipartisan deal ready to go, but his "shithole" fiasco threw a wrench into that.  Now, instead of a modest legislative victory and a probable popularity boost, Trump has a shutdown taking place on his watch.  He also has done very little to resolve this issue, other than rant on Twitter. So this becomes another item on his list of failures and screw-ups as President, but it won't cost him much in terms of popularity: he's gone about as low as he possibly can, and his remaining supporters are unshakeable.

House of Representatives: On one hand, the House passed the measures necessary to keep the government running.  That's a plus.  On the other hand, House Republicans tried to force a choice between CHIP (health insurance for children) and DACA (a provision allowing children of immigrants to remain in the United States.) There's a special place in hell for any group of politicians who try to force this kind of Sophie's Choice.  People don't expect much from House Reps anymore, though.  The House lost a bit of prestige, but not much.

Senate Republicans: Moderate losses for the Senate GOP over this shutdown.  They, along with Trump, precipitated this crisis - first, by defunding CHIP in September for use as a bargaining chip in the future, and spiking the pre-shutdown negotiations by adding several last-minute provisions to the deal. Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be occupying that perch in hell, next to the House Republicans. Besides being unspeakably immoral, it was also bad politics on McConnell's part.  He tried to create a false dilemma that would cause the Democrats to fold, and it backfired badly.  Maybe he should have been tending to his own party members, because four Senate Republicans voted against the bill; those four would not have been enough to pass the bill, but they do make it harder for Trump and the GOP to lay blame entirely on the Democrats.  Harder, but not impossible - because they are already making that case in the court of public opinion. It's not entirely unexpected, since they tried it before when public opinion turned against them after the last shutdown. However, they do have an easy time framing negative stories in ways that cast them in a positive light.

Democrats: They aren't entirely blameless because they were playing a game of brinkmanship over DACA; however, as I already stated, it takes two to tango.  The GOP is culpable for how they framed the DACA vote, and Trump takes some responsibility for derailing a bipartisan deal.  While I personally approve of renewing both CHIP and DACA, I don't approve of the Democratic Party's methods; they're doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.  And while I would like to see the Dems play hardball more often, I think what they're doing now sets a bad precedent.  We already have one major party that obstructs and employs scorched earth tactics.  We don't need two.

In the final analysis, I put the bulk of the blame on Trump and the GOP.  I think 70% to them, and 30% to the Democrats is a fair distribution.  A lot of this hinges on whose policies are taking a hit.  As I already stated, I support both DACA and CHIP, so part of me wants to see the Dems dig in and fight.  I also don't agree with how the GOP has governed, so I enjoy seeing them be on the receiving end of the same tactics they used.  I know it's corrosive for the country in the long run, though. The 2013 shutdown cost the country a lot, in terms of both treasure and prestige.  This one could do the same if it continues for very long, and at this point it's anyone's guess as to how it ends.  It also makes undoing the climate of hyper-polarization harder.

DACA, Congress, and Separation of Powers

I knew I'd eventually write something that would infuriate my (very small) audience, and based on the posts I'm seeing in my Facebook feed, this post could very well be the one that does it.  Don't worry, I've picked a last meal and I've got a cigarette and a blindfold - just in case.

Okay, so DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).  That's the current Divisive Issue of the Week.  I'll start with a little quick-and-dirty history on DACA before I discuss the recent developments.  DACA was President Obama's 2012 executive action on immigration, which partly resulted from repeated Congressional failures to pass its own piece of immigration reform, known as the DREAM Act.  Remember, executive action.  That will become important later.  I'm not sure how DACA meshes with the proposed DREAM Act, or with Congress' 2013 immigration reform act (S.744), and that's further down the rabbit hole than I plan to go.

That's DACA in a nutshell.  Now, as anyone who has followed the news recently knows, President Trump announced that he plans to roll back DACA, along with a complementary program called DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans).  His reversal will be delayed for six months, to give Congress time to act (presumably to craft its own legislation).  Okay, unpopular opinion time. . . Constitutionally, Trump is doing the right thing here.  Congress is the lawmaking branch of government, and it has the duty to come up with immigration laws.  Yes, Obama faced an extremely stubborn and unruly Congress (it absolutely lived up to it's nickname of "The Party of No"), but that's how the framework of government is structured.  The Founders assigned lawmaking authority to Congress; that duty was never granted to the President/Executive Branch.  I can understand Obama's frustration and desire to get something done - Congress was doing its best to block him at every turn, and nobody would stand for that.  It's human nature to push back against another person or group of people preventing you from accomplishing anything.  Maybe one person in 1,000 could resist that urge.  But the president was (is) supposed to resist that urge.  It's one of the core principles of the federal government - the president does not craft legislation.  There's no "except if Congress won't cooperate" loophole.

Not that Congress is blameless.  I'm not giving Obama a pass, but I understand why he acted the way he did.  He stepped in to fill a vacuum that Congress created, and he saw the obstructionist Congress as an obstacle to overcome.  It had six years and change to craft decent legislation, but instead it grandstanded with stunts like trying to repeal the ACA over fifty times - a task Congressional Republicans knew they couldn't achieve, but did anyway to keep their voters energized - and when the GOP gained a unified government in the 2016 elections, it had nothing prepared.  The GOP railed against the ACA for six years, and evidently put zero effort into writing a better piece of legislation.  Congress didn't govern, it obstructed and it abandoned its responsibility.

Now, the immigration issue is back in Congress' court, where it should be according to the legislative process.  Well, the CATO Institute predicts that rolling back DACA & DAPA will have a high economic cost:

"We estimate that the fiscal cost of immediately deporting the approximately 750,000 people currently in the DACA program would be over $60 billion to the federal government along with a $280 billion reduction in economic growth over the next decade."

Those are massive economic consequences, and if Congress was smart, it would vote to keep DACA in place, or at least craft some nearly-identical legislation.  This should be an easy decision.  However, Trump is still popular with the GOP base, and they want to see DACA repealed, in addition to being anti-immigrant.  One of Trump's key campaign promises was stricter immigration reform; and while he's a terrible statesman, he knows how to court public opinion.  Basically, Congressional Republicans are in a bind: rescind DACA and take a huge economic hit or preserve it somehow and enrage their base.  I predict Congress will let DACA lapse, because the Trump cabinet confirmation hearings and the ACA/BCRA fiasco showed that many Congressional Republicans will still vote along party lines, even if that vote carries serious economic consequences.  I do not trust Congress to make the smart decision here.

Even though I think Congress would be making a huge mistake by reversing DACA, it is Congress' mistake to make.  Trump is actually doing the right thing by rolling back an executive order and putting the responsibility on Congress.  Is repealing DACA cruel, foolish, and petty? Absolutely.  But we have to see beyond the immediate policy outcome we want and look at the long game.  No single official or branch of government should have too much power, and there is a convincing argument that the Executive has concentrated too much power over the past few decades.  Curbing that power will cause pain sooner or later - if not DACA, it will be something else.  But it needs to be done.

A few additional links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html?pagewanted=all
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/349148-daca-debate-turns-toward-congress
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/trump-dreamers-immigration-daca-immigrants-242301