But that sort of brinksmanship didn't work so well the last time Republicans tried it, forcing a government shutdown after their 1994 takeover of Congress.
Its true that it didn't work out very well for the Republicans (and even more so for small-government conservatives, who took a big hit even within the Republican party, many Republican's seemed to just stop caring about restraining the growth of government when the lost on this one), but the Republicans didn't really try it. Clinton did. Congress passed continuing resolutions which Clinton didn't sign, but the Republicans in congress got the blame.
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BLANKLEY: Well, first of all, I've got to correct the record as I expected I would. Newt did not close down the government in '95. The Republican Congress passed two bills and the President Clinton decided to veto them because he didn't like what was in the bill, which was funding plus requiring to balance the budget in seven years. And by the way, if you dispute it, I do have in my hot little hands the transcript from Nightline of the night the government closed down with Cokie Roberts and President Clinton agreeing that he vetoed the bill. So, putting that aside, we didn't want to close down the government. We wanted to balance the budget.
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COKIE ROBERTS: It's after midnight in Washington, so the government must be closed, right? Well, technically right, but this is Washington, after all, and nothing is quite that simple. After casting his threatened vetoes, President Clinton and congressional leaders met tonight, trying to fix the mess they had made, but the meeting broke up not long ago, with only the promise to meet again tomorrow.
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SCHULTZ: Well, let me, so you don't have history revisionism going on here, Tony, the fact is is that it was Newt Gingrich who made the decision based on the action of President Clinton that okay, that's it, we're just going to shut her down. The President was not advocating shutting down the Congress. Is that correct?
BLANKLEY: That is not, that is not true. Newt passed, we passed, we passed the bill with the money and the debt limit raise which is what was required. By the way, I have a Congressional Research Service study that says the same thing. Republicans passed the bill. The President vetoed it.
For the record, here's what that CRS study said:
The most recent shutdowns occurred in FY1996. There were two during the early part of the fiscal year. The first, November 14-19, 1995, resulted in the furlough of an estimated 800,000 federal employees. It was caused by the expiration of a continuing funding resolution (P.L. 104-31) agreed to on September 30, 1995, and by President Clinton's veto of a second continuing resolution and a debt limit extension bill.
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newsbusters.org
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Also the federal government never actually shut down. Certain functions did, but never all of them.
OTOH while it was a little unfair that the Republicans got the blame (if you consider it blameworthy, I don't but many did), they did talk about shutting down the government. So its understandable that people thought they did. |
