Shutdown was sharp lesson for Congress

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON The one good thing to come out of the 16-day government shutdown is that members of Congress may be reluctant to do it again anytime soon, lawmakers and political analysts say.

Polls reflect anger; GOP takes the biggest hit

Polls conducted during the shutdown showed Americans were angry at lawmakers in both parties over the government shutdown, although Republicans received the biggest share of the blame.

A poll released Oct. 15 by the Pew Research Center showed a 43 percent approval rating for President Barack Obama, a 31 percent approval rating for Democratic congressional leaders and a 20 percent approval rating for Republican leaders. Asked whom they blamed for the shutdown, 46 percent said Republicans and 37 percent said the Obama administration.

The poll had a margin of error of about plus or minus 3percentage points.

The political brinksmanship cost the economy $24 billion, prompted criticism from world leaders and put some government offices and 800,000 federal employees out of work. Public support for the Republican Party dipped to historic lows, even as anger toward incumbents of both parties spiked.

Americans will soon see if Congress is taking a new path. The deal approved Wednesday to reopen the government funds federal agencies only through Jan. 15 and raises the nation's borrowing limit through Feb. 7. House and Senate negotiators will have to reach a new budget deal over the next few months to avert another shutdown and debt-ceiling crisis.

"The only thing this shutdown did was put our dysfunction on display," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who was part of a bipartisan group that helped craft the deal to reopen the government. "People will think twice before they go down that road again."

The House Republicans and GOP senators who tried to use the government shutdown to derail the Affordable Care Act ended up with nothing to show for their efforts, said Jack Pitney, a political-science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California.

In the end, 87 House Republicans out of 232 voted against the deal, refusing to give in.

Their failure makes it less likely more-mainstream Republicans will support those tactics again, Pitney said. They are now more likely to stand up to their "tea party" colleagues and oppose a strategy that forces a shutdown, he said.

"I think a lot of members have gotten the message that this strategy doesn't work," Pitney said. "Now whether the most hard-core members have absorbed that knowledge remains to be seen. But I think most Republicans realize that the president is not going to fold, and that probably reduces the chances of a shutdown happening again. We'll see."

The shutdown was only the most recent clash over federal spending that has characterized Congress in recent years. Both chambers of Congress have not agreed on a budget resolution since 2009. While not binding, such resolutions provide a blueprint for the House and Senate appropriations committees to decide how to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

The failure of Congress to pass a budget or individual spending bills for federal agencies has forced lawmakers to pass "continuing resolutions" to keep the government funded. The 16-day shutdown occurred when Congress failed to pass the latest continuing resolution.

The Arizona Republicans in the House who fought to delay or defund the president's signature health-care law acknowledged the episode didn't end well for them.

"At the end of the day, I don't think we got a lot," said Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who voted against the deal that reopened the government.

Still, Schweikert said he is optimistic the crisis sparked a renewed commitment by both sides in Congress to come together and pass a budget.

"I don't think that (another shutdown) happens," Schweikert said. "I think there is a new emphasis to get the budget and appropriations committees fired up to get us through the budget process."

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said he was frustrated many Republicans caved to Democrats by voting for the bipartisan deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.

"All we've done is taught a spoiled child they're going to get their way," he said.

Despite the outcome, it was worth the effort, Gosar said. He vowed that he and other Republicans will continue to try to block the 3-year-old health-care law for the remainder of Obama's presidency.

"I don't know how Republicans lost at all," he said. "We had a conversation with the American people on a program that is destined to fail."

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said Republicans came away with the small victory of keeping the automatic, across-the-board "sequestration" budget cuts in place for fiscal 2014 -- at least until Jan. 15, when the current deal expires.

But the threat that the Affordable Care Act poses to "the fiscal survival of the country" was too great to ignore, Franks said.

"We control one-half of one-third of the American government," he said,referring to the GOP-controlled House. "Until the people of this country find both the wisdom and the will to change that equation, people like me are going to struggle to arrest America's march toward socialized medicine."

While the tea-party faction of the Republican Party defends its tactics, most members of Congress argue the shutdown was too painful to repeat, said Patrick Kenney, a political-science professor and director of the Institute for Social Science Research at Arizona State University.

"There was just too much cost in terms of real people's lives," Kenney said. "There was cost to citizens, to businesses and to the political parties. Both parties lost standing in the eyes of the public, but Republicans lost more. I think they will work really hard to avoid another shutdown if they can."

Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., said he hopes most lawmakers learned that there are no winners in a shutdown. "Everybody lost," Pastor said.

Congress must find a way to get back to the regular process of holding budget-committee meetings and negotiations to decide how much government will spend and what its priorities will be, Kenney said. "There is no magic bullet here," he said. "There's no good alternative to old-fashioned committee work and negotiating between the two parties. Threatening another shutdown is not going to accomplish what months of hard work through the committee process can accomplish."

Negotiators from the House and Senate budget committees have already begun meeting as part of the deal that Congress reached to reopen the government. They have a deadline of mid-December to complete proposals for compromises on a budget plan and report back.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., said there is a lot riding on those budget negotiations.

"A key factor will be how the negotiations in the conference committee play out," said spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson. "We'll know that by Dec. 15 and will have a better sense of whether compromise is happening. This cycle of flailing from crisis to crisis must be stopped."

Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., said Congress "cannot allow another round of political brinksmanship."

"We must come together to adopt a bipartisan budget that ends sequestration (automatic budget cuts), creates jobs and protects Social Security and Medicare," he said. "Southern Arizonans have already suffered too much from the economic uncertainty caused by the shutdown, and I am committed to working with my colleagues to find common-sense and long-term solutions to get our fiscal house in order."

But Gosar is pessimistic.

"We're going to be doing this all over again," he predicted. "This agreement by the Senate brings us to another crisis point. We're going to be doing this all next year and through the rest of this president's presidency. This is going to be a rocky road for the American people and for businesses."

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