Learning by example

My good Republican friends— from state Sen. President Pro Tem Michael Lamoureux of Russellville to attendees in my weekly class for retirees—express dismay.

They are distressed that I have put aside any semblance of even an appearance of bipartisan fairness and become stridently and uncompromisingly anti-Republican on the government shutdown and debt ceiling.

They ask, indeed lament: What happened to that theme of lean to the left, but work together for pragmatic solutions?

“It can’t all be one way,” a sterling gentleman of Republican persuasion said to me with clear exasperation— almost as an entreaty—after the retiree class Wednesday morning.

My reply: Yes, in this case, it can be, and has been, all one way. There is no pragmatism to the Republican position. And the truth must be told.

Bipartisan negotiations are good, indeed vital. We need some in Congress on the farm bill. We need some on spending. We need some on making fixes in the Affordable Care Act.

But taking the government hostage and demanding ransom, inflicting broad collateral pain because of a localized political fight and policy debate you can’t win otherwise through normal and fair means— that’s not legitimate bipartisanship. Not remotely.

Is anyone suggesting that keeping the government running with its debts paid is a mere capitulation to Democrats? That government’s existence itself is negotiable with the Democrats wanting it and the Republicans flexible enough on the question to go without it? Oh, please. You know better. I will now draw an Arkansas comparison to explain the utter folly of the Republican position.

If shutting down government and declining to keep government’s bills paid are acceptable tactics requiring the other side to negotiate—as Lamoureux asserted to be the case in a texting debate with me in midweek—then I have an idea for the minority Arkansas Democratic legislative caucus.

Arkansas’ legislative Democrats did not like the voter-identification law passed by the Legislature last year. They feel strongly that it’s wrong. But they lost elections and thus lost majority seats and therefore lost the legislative vote.

But by the teachings of the John Boehner-Ted Cruz-Tom Cotton School of Holding Government Hostage, the Arkansas Democratic legislative caucus has a golden opportunity.

We now hold off-year budget legislative sessions to re-up our annual appropriations. We have such a session coming up in February.

Most appropriations require threefourths votes. There are 48 Democrats in the 100-member House, plenty to deny the 75 votes necessary to pass new appropriations and fund state government.

So the state legislative Democratic caucus could simply vote “no” on all appropriations unless and until the Republicans agreed to repeal the law requiring photo identification by voters.

They could threaten to leave Medicaid unmatched, higher education unfunded, prisoners unfed, the State Police without resources, crimes uninvestigated.

It is true that official state spending would revert to the previously existing Revenue Stabilization Act. But there would be no fresh authorization for the individual appropriations that get plugged into it.

There would be some miscellaneous money to spend, but not enough to keep agencies operating. And we might go ahead and pass the public school appropriation, since it requires only a majority vote and is a matter of constitutional law.

Otherwise the minority state legislative delegation of Democrats could flex its righteous muscle and simply shut her down effective with the new fiscal year July 1, 2014.

In fact, henceforth the minority party in the Legislature—so long as it possessed more than a fourth of the membership—could always simply shut down government any time the majority passed a bill the minority didn’t like.

So if Sen. Jason Rapert of Conway brings along a bill to define life at the point of male arousal and deny a woman an abortion thereafter, and passes it with Republican votes, then the Democrats could simply close state government’s door unless the majority relented and took back the bill.

I’d best stop. I’m about to talk myself into something I intended as untenable.

Here, to the sane contrary, is how matters should and must work. And I am happy to praise Republican state Rep. John Burris of Harrison in citing the example.

As House minority leader when Republicans were still the minority (if only by a few votes) in February 2012, Burris led the GOP delegation in offering its own proposed Revenue Stabilization Act in the fiscal session.

He maneuvered, and the Democrats maneuvered, and it became obvious the Democrats were going to get the Revenue Stabilization Act done as usual and their way.

So Burris rose in the House to say the Republican caucus had made a good fight but that it would withdraw its competing Revenue Stabilization bill and support the other.

I was proud of the young man. He could have asked his caucus to shut down state government. But that would have been wrong. P.S.: Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure state Democratic legislators wouldn’t actually be so irresponsible in February as to emulate the likes of John Boehner, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.