Government shutdown drama may finally have a positive outcome

OPINION:

Once again, Congress is scrambling to meet an artificial funding deadline. Members have until Friday to find a way to avoid a shutdown of the federal government’s nonessential functions. In this recurring drama, House Speaker Mike Johnson now has a unique chance to pull off a major victory — as long as members of his own party don’t get in the way.

If Mr. Johnson ends up passing a clean short-term funding resolution that avoids a shutdown and the overall budgetary impasse persists through April 30, an automatic sequestration mechanism will kick in and slash 1% from the budget.

Championed by Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican deficit hawk, the sequestration provision was meant only as a bludgeon to force both sides to negotiate. Now it looks like the cuts could give the House Republicans the best policy win they’ve seen in years, as Uncle Sam’s forced belt-tightening would put the nation on the road to fiscal recovery.

The problem is, Mr. Johnson is up against rabble-rousing members of his caucus who think government-shutdown theatrics make good politics. For them, nothing is more frustrating than coming to Washington to shake things up, only to serve in a body with a two-vote majority, unable to enact anything of consequence into law.

In their view, the only chance they have at making a difference is to exploit their sliver of leverage to hold the Biden administration responsible for things like the catastrophe on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, they haven’t explained how forcing the Department of Transportation and the Federal Trade Commission to temporarily close their doors does anything to slow illegal immigration. Worse, every furloughed fed is guaranteed full back pay, which makes shutdowns far more expensive than funding the government in the first place.

Pretending otherwise, which is what the rabble-rousers are doing, is a refusal to acknowledge that elections have consequences. For whatever reason, the people put President Biden in the White House and left the Democrats in charge of the Senate.

That means the best the House GOP can do is block the worst legislative proposals coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The lower chamber isn’t powerful enough to advance conservative values on its own.

The border won’t be secure until voters replace the White House team responsible for border policy, and Mr. Biden and the Democrats see a shutdown as their ticket to avoiding replacement. Consistent with what we already know will be their strategy for the upcoming election, they would immediately blame budgetary dysfunction on “extreme MAGA Republicans” taking their marching orders from former President Donald Trump. And they’d get away with it.

Thus, the outcome in November is the only one that matters for racking up lasting conservative victories. Some of the members who pulled the speaker’s chair out from under then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy have even threatened to do likewise to Mr. Johnson if he doesn’t sign on to their folly.

These members ought to set their egos aside and settle for the biggest and easiest win the GOP has any hope of securing.