‘Fireworks’ likely as 2016 rivals enter government funding fight

The 2016 elections are about to create a major headache for GOP leaders in Congress as they seek to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

Four GOP presidential contenders in the Senate — Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — have said Congress should defund Planned Parenthood. And they’ve mostly argued that if the fight leads to a government shutdown, the blame would fall on Democrats and President Obama.

{mosads}Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has tried to tamp down the defunding talk, saying that action would have to wait for a new president.

But whether McConnell and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) can keep their troops in line remains to be seen. Many expect that Cruz, who was a major player in the 2013 government shutdown, will again stir up trouble for leadership.

“There’s real potential for fireworks in the Senate in September,” said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and president of Potomac Strategy Group.

“I expect Cruz and Rand, particularly, to use this fight to collect as much data as possible and to earn as much media as possible,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see microsites launched and email addresses collected and small dollar donations raised.”

The to-do list awaiting lawmakers when they return from recess is daunting, though the most pressing item is passing a government funding bill by Oct. 1.

While GOP leaders have signaled their intention to approve a short-term funding resolution, conservatives are demanding that all federal money for Planned Parenthood be slashed from the legislation.  

“I believe we should use every and any procedural tool available to defund Planned Parenthood,” Cruz said before the August recess.

“We can expect President Obama and many of the congressional Democrats to cry loudly that if Congress uses its authority, Congress will be quote ‘shutting down the government.’ That, of course, is nonsense,” Cruz said during a conference call to pastors last week, according to The Washington Post.

Political strategists and analysts are skeptical that Republicans wouldn’t be blamed for a shutdown, as polls indicated they were in 2013.

“We’ve done this now with immigration and we’ve done it with ObamaCare, so we know how it plays out, said John Feehery, president of QGA Public Affairs who also served as the top spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

“It’s still a headache because there’s a lot of pressure put on both McConnell and Boehner from the Ted Cruz fundraising machine,” he said.

The political risk from a shutdown is particularly acute for McConnell, with his majority facing a difficult election cycle where 23 incumbents are up for reelection, many of them in blue-leaning states.

But the Senate’s presidential hopefuls have made clear that they won’t back down from the Planned Parenthood fight.

In early August, Paul said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he supports “any legislation” that would defund Planned Parenthood, and suggested Obama would be the one shut down the government over the issue.

Rubio has taken a similar line during interviews from the campaign trail.

“Are [Democrats] willing to shut down the government to protect one organization that sells fetal tissue?” Rubio asked activists during a New Hampshire visit last week, according to The Boston Globe.

Graham has differed slightly from his rivals, saying last month in South Carolina that he supports defunding Planned Parenthood while warning that a shutdown would harm national security.

“Anybody that wants to shut down the government is shutting down the ability to stop the next attack, which I think is coming if we don’t do something differently,” he said, according to Roll Call.

The defund Planned Parenthood campaign has been gaining steam since an anti-abortion-rights group, the Center for Medical Progress, began releasing a series of undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the handling of fetal tissue.

Before the Senate left for recess, Democrats blocked stand-alone legislation that would have blocked Planned Parenthood funding. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who is facing a difficult reelection race in 2016, voted with the Democrats, and McConnell switched his vote to “no” so that he would have the ability to bring it up for a vote again.

In the House, meanwhile, Boehner said before the recess that he wanted investigations into Planned Parenthood to play out before making a decision on a defunding bill.

GOP aides said last week that leadership has now promised a vote when lawmakers return on freezing Planned Parenthood funding, though it’s not clear what form the legislation will take.

A group of conservatives has warned Boehner they would vote against any government funding bill that includes Planned Parenthood, but linking the two things would almost surely draw a veto from Obama.

“The highest priority of both McConnell and Boehner is to keep the government running so Congress doesn’t tank in the polls,” said Feehery, who is also a columnist for The Hill.

If Boehner doesn’t find a way to satisfy conservatives, some say his hold on the Speakership could be at risk.

“If Speaker Boehner makes the deals that every one of us knows he’s going to have to make this fall or early winter, then there will be a real attempt to oust him as Speaker,” predicted Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Many conservatives argue that another government shutdown might not damage their image heading into 2016. They note how the party triumphed in last year’s midterm elections despite predictions of doom after the 2013 shutdown.

But a presidential election is a different animal, experts note, drawing millions of additional people to the polls.

“This is not going to be a 2014 turnout where you had a relatively low minority and young-person turnout,” Bell said.

A new Quinnipiac University poll found 41 percent of voters would blame Republicans for a shutdown, compared to 33 percent who would hold Democrats and Obama responsible.

“Even if Democrats are the reason the government shuts down for a day or two, it’s a Republican Congress,” Bell said. “They will get blamed and the president has the bully pulpit.”