Republican confusion is the hallmark of the "chaos caucus": No message, no reason, no vision and no plan

Amid GOP confusion, U.S. braces for ‘first-ever shutdown about nothing’ What’s the deal with this government shutdown? 

Echo essay published in The Washington Post by Jeff Stein.

In a standoff even Republicans are comparing to ‘Seinfeld,’ because it’s hard to tell.

Message to #GOP: What's it about?  It's about "nothing"!

In 1995, and 1996, the federal government shut down as House Republicans and the Clinton administration clashed over spending cuts. In 2013, the government shut down because of a partisan disagreement over President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

(Meanwhile, since President Barack Obama's "Obamacare" passed, the result has been to provide affordable health care coverage. As of early 2023, the report finds that more than 40 million Americans have coverage under the ACA, the highest total on record.)

In 2018, Democrats bucked President Donald Trump’s demands to fund a U.S.-Mexico border wall, leading to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Jerry Seinfeld "It's about nothing!"

“We are truly heading for the first-ever shutdown about nothing,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Strain has started referring to the current GOP House-led impasse as “the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown,” a reference to the popular sitcom widely known as “a show about nothing.” “The weirdest thing about it is that the Republicans don’t have any demands. What do they want? What is it that they’re going to shut the government down for? We simply don’t know.”

Lawmakers have until 12:01 a.m. Sunday to pass a new law to extend government funding, or a wide range of critical federal services will come to a halt. On Friday, House Republicans voted down their own proposal to approve a short-term spending bill to fund the government, as well as a separate effort that would have cut numerous essential government services by at least 30 percent. The failure left House GOP’s leadership path forward unclear.

Typically, funding showdowns in divided government between Congress and the White House have featured pitched battles over specific policies, such as Trump’s border wall or Obamacare. But budget experts and historians say the current impasse stands out for its lack of a clear policy disagreement.

House Republican leaders had already worked out an agreement with President Biden in May on government spending levels for the next fiscal year, but they’re working on legislation that would spend far less than the agreed amounts. The House has no plans yet for a temporary extension to government funding, which means there haven’t been significant negotiations with the Democratic Senate and White House. As long as House Republicans cannot find consensus on their demands, Democratic policymakers — largely backed in this fight by Senate Republicans — have declined to offer concessions, because they don’t know which ones would suffice.

Asked by reporters what could be done to avoid a shutdown, Biden responded, “If I knew that, I would’ve already done it.”

Compounding the confusion is that it is not clear how or when House Republicans can forge consensus. (Failure❗) Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has for weeks tried to unify his caucus around a set of spending demands, but his efforts have been stymied in part because a handful of far-right insurgents keep changing their own demands. And so, the legislative leaders tasked with funding the government appear to be stuck.

House Republican appropriators have advanced legislation that would dramatically slash the safety net and other domestic programs, including gutting some education subsidies by 80 percent. 

Those bills, however, are not only doomed in the Senate but also have failed to pass the House, leaving the lower chamber’s policy priorities unclear.

“I frankly don’t understand it — I think it’s sort of nuts. There are times people vote yes one day, and then they come back and vote no the next day, and can’t explain why they switched,” ❓😟😞 said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a McCarthy ally.

Gingrich led House Republicans through two different shutdowns nearly 30 years ago, a brief one in late 1995 and a longer one weeks later. “I find it hard to understand what they want, too, because they change constantly — that’s a big part of the problem.”

Asked if he has a hard time tracking the insurgents’ demands of McCarthy, Gingrich said yes, adding, “(and...) 'So do they'.”

Even Grover Norquist, the president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, has tormented generations of GOP officials by organizing House backbenchers against their leaders. But he chastised the current group of House insurgents for failing to coalesce around an intelligible set of demands. The shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 eventually pushed Clinton and the GOP-led Congress to agree on balanced-budget legislation and other federal changes. Now, Norquist said, far-right members throw out so many different demands — an end to Ukraine funding, tougher immigration restrictions, dramatic spending cuts, changes to House procedures — that it is impossible to know what they want.

“You can’t have seven reasons, and a different one each week, (❗) and expect American people to understand what your point was. In prior fights, there was a focus on why you were doing this. 

But right now, what would someone watching this on TV be taking away? It’s about too many things, which makes this about nothing,” Norquist said.

If this weekend truly does bring the “Seinfeld” shutdown, Norquist said, it will in part reflect the lack of clarity about what the holdouts in the House are demanding.

“One of the rules of ‘Seinfeld’ was: ‘No learning takes place,’” he said. “And one of the rules from that show is the case here — there’s no attempt here to learn from previous episodes.”