The Suicide Caucas

~ Laura

congressdistricts_final-01The New Yorker has a great map of the districts where the GOP’s “Suicide Caucus” lives. Ryan Lizza writes,

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.

In the past, Lizza says, party leadership could control these factions. I’m not sure if that is true. American political parties never have had the leadership controls that other countries have, because of our voting procedures.

But mainstream Republicans are getting upset. Check out John Podhoretz’s column in the New York Post.

Meanwhile, Americans are getting a great lesson on all the things that government does. It provides supervision of food production. It cares for the families of dead soldiers. And, hopefully, we won’t have to learn hard lessons about how the government deals with debt.

 

Published by Laura

29 thoughts on “The Suicide Caucas”

  1. I’m not sure if that is true. American political parties never have had the leadership controls that other countries have, because of our voting procedures.

    Maybe the answer is in the 2nd edition of Legislative Leviathan.

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  2. I’d love to hear your definition of “mainstream Republican.” Is it something close to “Republican who doesn’t stand in the way of Democratic legislative goals”?

    “And, hopefully, we won’t have to learn hard lessons about how the government deals with debt.”

    There’s only so much the US can take on before we will default. Currently, every time the federal government spends $100, over $40 of that is borrowed.

    http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/jul/15/paul-ryan/gop-rep-paul-ryan-says-us-borrows-42-cents-each-do/

    That is not sustainable. There’s only so long that either an individual or an organization can continue to borrow basic operating expenses before the whole thing goes kablooey.

    Raise taxes? Unfortunately for fans of this particular solution, no matter what our tax rates have been (and they have varied hugely), US federal tax receipts have stayed very consistently within a band of just under 15% to just over 20%, with the lows tending to occur during economic stress and the highs tending to occur during flusher times. We are currently seem to be at the high end of our tax-collecting capacity. It would be very imprudent to imagine that the US government can consistently collect more than 20% of GDP in taxes, as that has happened only fleeting over the last 70 years.

    It is much more prudent to assume tax receipts in the 17-18% of GDP range.

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    1. It isn’t sustainable to borrow that much, especially since voluntarily not making interest payments really tends to increase your cost of borrowing.

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      1. Also, the range of tax receipts is from 15% to 20% of national GDP, which is nothing at all like “consistent.” That’s currently a difference of $750 billion dollars or so. In other words, more than the entire discretionary portion of the federal budget.

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      2. “Also, the range of tax receipts is from 15% to 20% of national GDP, which is nothing at all like “consistent.” That’s currently a difference of $750 billion dollars or so. In other words, more than the entire discretionary portion of the federal budget.”

        For a period of 70 years, ranging from the end of WWII through the retirement of the Boomers, it’s pretty darn consistent.

        In any case, it suggests that there is a natural upper bound for US tax revenue, beyond which it is not reasonable to be able to expect to be able to collect more taxes.

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    2. “I’d love to hear your definition of ‘mainstream Republican.’ Is it something close to ‘Republican who doesn’t stand in the way of Democratic legislative goals’?”

      Was Barry Goldwater a mainstream Republican?

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      2. Anyone who manages to snag the Republican presidential nomination is pretty has to be a “mainstream Republican.”

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  4. Just moved into Michele Bachmann’s territory. At least it means I can write to her as she only accepts email from zipcodes in her district. Not that I expect her to change, but at least she can’t say all of her constituents support the shutdown. I mentioned that our house closing will probably not go through next week since we sold it to a vet (and I don’t think the VA is processing loans). Or that my daughter’s application to the NSF will not be accepted while the government is closed. And finally, that salmonella outbreak scares me. Like living in Bangladesh — ineffective or missing CDC and FDA.

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  6. The statistic I’m looking at is the 17 Republicans who won in districts that Obama won in. In the past, these partisan divisions have required people who cross over the party line (the blue dog Democrats, or the moderate Republicans). It’s clear that there are fewer of those cross-over moderates (though I would argue that’s in large part explained on the Democratic side by how much the Democrats moved to the middle in the era of Clinton and the DLC).

    In WA’s delegation of 10, there are 6 Dems and 4 Reps. One of those 4 Republicans, David Reichert, is in a district that Obama won (by a narrow margin). In CA, there are a couple of districts with Republican congressman in districts won by Obama, sometimes with fairly decent margins — Gary Miller, for example, in whose district Obama won by 57/40 and David Valadao (55/43). And there’s Ros-Lehtinen, in Florida (53/46). Of those only Reichert is on record as saying he’d vote for a CR (and, as others have pointed out, even those who say they’ll vote for a CR haven’t said they’ll make the vote happen). Nine of those 17 have said, in some form or another, though potentially unreliable, that they’ll vote for a clean CR.

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  7. The ACA and Keystone are neither deficit/budget bills. On the other hand, repealing the medical device tax does have a significant budget effect. I think many Democrats (say, the center) agrees that the budget needs to be brought in line with revenues. The question is at what budget level and in what time frame and with what services. I guess I’d call that the mainstream position, for both parties.

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  8. I like Podhoretz column for explaining to me why the ideologues in the Republican party think they can win this battle — that the majority of Americans poll unfavorably on the ACA (51/40) and that 2/3 of people identify themselves as “conservative.”

    I do remind myself that the democrats have to avoid falling in similar traps. I don’t mind the talk on taking back the house in 2014 (two recent polls, recent WA Post op ed by Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium), but I think that we have to be careful in listening to the data that supports our desires.

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    1. I’m not sure that taking back the House is possible. Between gerrymandering and the general greater geographic concentration of Democrats, there’s a very strong headwind against it. PA has 13 of 18 House seats held by Republicans, voted for Obama with a 5% margin, and yet hasn’t a single district where Obama got more votes and Republican was elected.

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      1. Really, people have to get over comparing the 3.8 trillion dollar budget of the United States to the budget of a family.

        Not paying your debt might make sense if 1) people aren’t planning on lending you anymore money anyway and 2) you have a plan for how you’ll survive without debt. 3) your stopping debt payments won’t drive the economy of the world off the road. The US isn’t in that position and would have to stop buying groceries if it stopped paying debt.

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      1. At some point, the most responsible thing an individual can do is to stop paying debt payments and confine themselves to paying for basic living expenses.

        It’s wrong to pay debt service while not buying groceries.

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      2. That would be less hilarious if it wasn’t just this summer that the people holding the budget hostage hadn’t cut food stamps while maintaining farm subsidies.

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  9. Yes, I fear wishful thinking. I just looked at Ohio, 12/16 House seats, and again, none where a Republican house seat has Obama winning. And, looking at the shapes of the districts themselves, I suspect a statistically well done gerymandering.

    Looking at the boundaries of the district that includes most of Columbus being case in point — areas have been carved out to concentrate votes. Fascinating, really, and, I think, evidence against those who try to argue that Republicans are going to fail because they won’t pay attention to the data.

    Obama won 4 districts in Ohio, the same 4 that are represented by Democrats, and won Ohio, (50.7/47.7, 166K votes). He won those for districts by, 40.8%, 36.7%, 66.3% and 27.5 % — that’s the difference in Obama v Romney). Obama lost Boehner’s district by the largest margin, -25.5%, and that’s Romney’s highest win.

    Wow, and look at their districts:

    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/OH/11
    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/OH/9
    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/OH/13
    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/OH/3

    Three of those 4 Democrats are women, and they are the only women in the OH delegation.

    The distracting seems to have very effectively concentrated Democratic votes into single congressional districts. It would be interesting to see the data modelling they used to produce that result — and how much was data driven, intuition driven, and politically driven.

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    1. In Ohio, the Kasich is the guy most likely to feel the impact. His poll number have been good compared to somebody like Corbett (who was in trouble long before this shutdown) and something like this might provide the shift needed for him to lose.

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  10. I can’t believe I am quoting Andrew Sullivan, whom I’ve always disliked, but I find myself more and more interested in his perspective these days because he seems to be operating under the same understanding of the facts as me, even if I don’t trust/respect his political perspective. He wrote yesterday:

    “I take it for granted, for example, that the deficit is falling fast, that the current continuing resolution that is now in suspension affirmed the sequester levels of spending that are far lower than most Democrats would like, that Obamacare is settled law that can only be repealed by the usual democratic process, and that no sane government would default on its debts. But none of this seems to be accepted by the spokespeople of the Republican ‘party’.”

    Link: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/08/the-best-of-the-dish-today-78/

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  11. Well, and in the long run, Kasich being gone could make a difference by changing the politics of which people get to vote and how the districting works.

    I remember Kasich when he first ran for Congress — he spoke at our high school. He offended me within moments of starting his speech by snapping at his driver to get him a drink of water (i.e. snapping his fingers, and then watching his driver scurry to find water).

    I’m also find it interesting to see that the PA delegation of 16 contains only one woman.

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  12. Earlier, folks have been talking tax burden, and referencing Federal tax. It’s worth remembering that in high tax states, the total burden can be 17-20 per cent higher, between sales and income. And THEN if you live in a green-&-leafy burb, another $10-$30 thousand in property taxes.

    Back to ‘suicide caucus’, and wistfulness for the old days of compliant representatives who would follow their leadership: Earmarks are gone. Earmarks are how you bought compliance. If you don’t have earmarks, you have almost no leverage with your more, well, frisky caucus members. Jim Wright could bully and buy his members. Boehner has to persuade.

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    1. There’s a lot to your point about earmarks, but I’m not sure it applies here. It doesn’t seem that Boehner is looking for votes for something he wants but rather that he is not holding a vote because of what his caucus wants.

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  13. Em Aitch – Jim Wright’s members jumped to his tune. Boehner jumps to his members’. The difference is that Jim Wright had credible threats and promises, and his members could go back to their primary electorate and say, well maybe you didn’t love that vote, but it got us this bridge over the Hiwassee/ Youghiogheny/ Clinch. Now, some UNELECTED FEDERAL BUREAUCRAT (like, for example, me) decides whether the Youghiogheny needs another crossing.

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  14. Anyway, you’d think the people who just last year spent millions on TV ads urging people to vote against Obama because he cut Medicare would be just a wee bit less surprised that most people don’t believe what they are really after is sensible entitlement reform.

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    1. It’s looking more and more like the great Republican crusade for fiscal responsibility has devolved into nothing more than a petulant rant and an grab at a tax cut for a special interest (medical device makers). Which should surprise exactly nobody, including Ted Cruz.

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