Most of my research starts with the presumption that individuals are rational.  By this, I mean that they know the rules of the game, and they also know that the other players are rational.[1]  Simple empirical observation indicates the inherent contestability of this presumption.  So, why do I continue to adopt it? Well, I have written before about this point in a number of posts, but (or, “accordingly”) I’ll say the presumption of rational behavior establishes the robustness of the phenomena that the model aims to “predict/explain/mimic.”  That is, presuming rationality makes my life harder as a theorist. If I did not have rationality as a stake for the tent I’m putting up, it would be pretty darn easy to place that tent wherever I want: as a theorist, I can explain anything if you let me bring irrational behavior to the table. Setting that to the side, however, there’s another point I’ve been thinking about lately that I wanted to drone on about a bit.  If we step away from presuming rationality, we need to put something in its place.  There is a huge and growing literature on deviations from rationality in social sciences.[2] In a quick form, my challenge to those who would have models incorporate these findings is as follows:

What are the “parameters” of irrationality?

A related version of this is “which varieties of irrationality should I put in my model?” There are various forms of irrational choice: those that deal with

1. intertemporal choice (e.g., overconfidence in your own patience in the future),
2. evaluating risk (e.g., is it a gamble over winnings or losses?),
3. updating on information (e.g., favorable vs. unfavorable information?)
4. …

So, this leads to two questions.  First, which of these is more important to include?  Common sense (and the quest for causal identification, if that’s your cuppa tea) suggests that throwing them all in will yield something unmanageable.

Second, and more precisely, even if I choose one to include (for example, to see how the availability heuristic affects how voters evaluate incumbents and challengers, and how this affects campaign decisions), how do I parameterize/represent this bias?

Put another way, most (formal and informal) models of behavioral biases rely on at least an implicit notion of perception: in a nutshell, most biases in choice can be described as some “label” or “feature” of the decision problem that the decision-maker should not actually take into account actually bearing on the decision-maker’s ultimate choice(s).

The question, and conclusion of this post (in search of feedback), is how do we model the world of “features?”  That is, how does one make an even plausibly “general” theory of a phenomenon that includes behavioral biases?  After all, most models are designed to be generally applicable—where “generally” means across time, or space, or something.  Traditional models of choice/behavior presume that people have a “general” feature known as a preference ordering (or, essentially equivalently, a utility/payoff function).  But the (both formal and informal) “behavioral” models have been built largely on noting a series of deviations from the predictions of the classical choice model in a specific (often laboratory) setting.  This isn’t an objection that the findings aren’t externally valid—it’s an honest question as to how one extends the findings to general (i.e., external) settings.

So, what ingredients should I throw into the pot if I want to cook up a model of the mind to deploy in my models of political behavior and institutions?

With that, I call upon a favorite, and leave you with this.

___________

[1] There’s even more in here, as I wrote about here. I will set the issue of common knowledge of rationality aside for the purpose of this post, as it merely amplifies the point I am trying to make.

[2] I won’t bother to cite any of it, because it would be merely gratuitous and possibly lead to erroneous inferences about what I intend to be inferred by the inevitable omissions from such a list.  That concern, if you think about it, is meta. (What? Oh, okay… start here.)

I am nonpartisan.  I am pro-public service.  Stories like this are both disingenuous and unethical. The idea of a public social policy is that those who qualify, ahem, qualify. There is no “well, do you support this policy?” addendum.  Prohibition of such eligibility tests, however and by whomever conducted, is the basis of a liberal democracy qua equal protection. If we as a people say “these citizens qualify for these benefits,” that’s where the sentence–and the qualifications, as they might be—stop.  I strongly support social safety nets, and I stipulate that I understand the theory and empirics of incentives. That said (and a fortiore), a classical political liberal–someone who sees both the direct and indirect values of dissent and public discourse—should not only be, but seek to be seen as being, above the ultimate hypocrisy: proclaiming support for free speech and implicitly requiring speech conformance for the receipt of public benefits. 

Shame on you, gawker. The true argument is won without demonizing the (family of the) opponents. That’s game theory 101: a game won by dissimulating is a game won not for long.

With that, I leave you with this.

This opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled “Why We Make Bad Decisions,” by Noreena Hertz, explores the implications of a well-established psychological/behavioral phenomenon known as confirmation bias.  In a nutshell, confirmation bias describes the general tendency to overweigh information in line with one’s prior beliefs and/or give too little weight to information contradicting those beliefs or attitudes.

This phenomena is clearly relevant to politics in a wide array of settings.  Voters may ignore “negative” information about their own favored party or give too much credence to “negative” information about other parties.  Individuals may selectively pay more attention to positive information about the policies they favor or ignore information that reflects poorly upon those policies.

Well, as is my usual approach, I wanted to briefly point out that observing such a bias may not be irrational.  I have two explanations for this behavior. The first demonstrates why positive and negative information should be evaluated differently in certain (common) contexts.  The second explanation demonstrates why individuals should stop exerting effort on updating their beliefs (i.e., paying attention to information) in certain (again, common) choice situations.

Both explanations rely on a simple presumption about beliefs: I will presume, as typical, that an individual’s beliefs are important only insofar as they affect the individual’s behavior. This is an important presumption, and it is definitely contestable, albeit not in standard social science models.  I will touch upon it again in the conclusion of the post.

Before continuing, note that I am not arguing that Hertz is “wrong.”  To the degree that one is confronted with “pure and costless information” in a single decision-maker situation, there is absolutely no reason to do anything other than faithfully revise your beliefs as far as possible according to Bayes’s Rule.  This is a mathematical fact.  That said, situations in which information is pure and costless and one’s decisions and incentives are in no way contaminated by strategic considerations are pretty few and far between.

That said, let’s move on to the explanations.

The first explanation is demonstrated by the following example. Suppose you have decided to get your yard reseeded: the bare spots have gotten unbearable, and something must be done.  Now suppose that you head down to the local nursery to get some seed and, while jawing with the sales person, he or she says “you know, buying sod is a much faster way to get a beautiful lawn.”  Should you believe this statement? Yes.

Should you change your beliefs about the effectiveness of seed and sod? Well, that’s not clear. In particular, you need to consider the source of the information and his or her motivations.  Sod is much more expensive than seed, and the sales person is presumably motivated to increase the amount of money you spend.  Accordingly, you should give less weight to the information—particularly in terms of whether you should put the seed back and buy sod instead.  Furthermore, once you realize that you should probably not act upon the information in terms of changing your choice, it is not even clear that you should process/pay attention to anything that the sales person says about the relative value of sod over seed.[1]

The second explanation is based on the following example.  Suppose that you have spent many months studying (say) two different houses, and you will buy one and exactly one.  Eventually, you have enough evidence to conclude with near-certainty that house A is the best one to buy.  At some point, your belief about the relative values of the two houses (if you are good Bayesian decision theorist) will be sufficiently certain that you would not pay any nontrivial cost for additional information.  Incorporating and processing information is costly insofar as it requires mental effort.  Even if it doesn’t, belief revision is important only to the degree that it will affect your decision.  But rarely is decision revision costless.  That is, most decisions about (say) personal health and finances are ongoing: changing one’s habits and diet, rearranging one’s asset allocation and consumption—these all require effort.  Put these two together, and it is clear that in some cases, ignoring information that is contrary to one’s beliefs may actually be rational.[2]

Finally, before concluding, I want to quickly mention that beliefs can be directly valuable in a “psychological” sense.  To be quick about it, suppose that you enjoy believing that your future will be bright.  Say you took an exam yesterday and will find out the results in 2 weeks.  You enjoy thinking that you did well, and you dislike negative disappointment.  In such cases, it is often optimal for you to have beliefs of the following form:

1. Walk out of the exam thinking you did INCREDIBLY WELL.
2. Keep thinking this.  No reason to find out anything about it, even if you can, until the end.
3. In the moments before you find out, recalibrate those beliefs downward.[3]

The same logic applies in situations in which the decision is a fait accompli for other reasons.  That is, suppose you have to buy a given house.  If you enjoy thinking that “the future is bright” even a little bit, then you have no immediate incentive to update upon/pay attention to information that disconfirms your “apparent prior beliefs” (i.e., the beliefs that would justify buying the house if you had a choice).

The link between this and the apparently pathological belief revision by (say) smokers/drinkers/drug users/UNC football fans and others “addicted” to arguably unhealthy lifestyles is clear: if you know—for whatever reason—that your decision is invariant to your beliefs, there is no reason to hold rational ones.  Indeed, there is probably a clear argument on “psychological” grounds that you should update in ways consistent with confirmation bias.

With that, I leave you with this and this.

__________________

[1] Of course, the opposite is true if the sales person tells you, “oh, you are definitely doing the right thing not buying sod.” In this case, the information is more credible because of the source’s motivations, so that this would rationally be given at least as much credence as if it were provided by a “neutral” source, and would therefore similarly look like confirmation bias.  In politics, this is known as the “it takes a Nixon to go to China” logic.

[2] You could call this a “tune in, update, and drop out” kind of logic.  And, it is beyond the scope of this post, but it is also a justification for apparent overconfidence in some strategic situations.  In particular, committing to not updating on the viability of a joint venture can bolster members’ incentives to contribute individually to the team production components of the venture.  In other words, if I am less worried that you might be listening to evidence that could make you doubt the value of the venture, I am in some situations less worried about my own individual effort being in vain because of you happening to have heard, on your own, that the venture might be less profitable than we all believed when we started out.  There is a link to NFL quarterbacks and head coaches in here somewhere.

[3] Years ago, I wrote a paper with George Loewenstein and Niklas Karlsson, on exactly this behavioral optimization problem.  The basic idea is that irrational beliefs (and irrational belief revision) is even “more easily made optimal/rational” if one allows for beliefs to matter on their own, which I rule out in the two explanations, but clearly is descriptively realistic.

Another quote in this (still) excellent piece in the New York Times by Jeremy W. Peters, describing the resolution to the debt ceiling and funding showdown, stuck out at me:

The question so crucial to the Republican Party’s viability now, heading into the 2014 Congressional elections and beyond, is whether it has been so stung by the fallout that the conservatives who insisted on leading this fight will shy away in the months ahead when the government runs out of money and exhausts its borrowing authority yet again.

A key point in the compromise reached to resolve the current crisis regards the timing of the “two crises.”  The government is funded through January 15th, 2014, and the debt ceiling is extended through February 7th, 2014. Note that this compromise does two related things on this dimension:

1. It does not put the “funding crises” on the same day, and
2. It puts the less important one (federal government appropriations) first.

Peters appropriately asks whether the “next round” of this dynamic will be occasioned by different behavior by (say) the House Republicans.  But I want to focus on a logically prior question:

Why didn’t Congress pass something that delayed both of these past the 2014 elections?  That is, why did they simply kick the can a short way down the road?

On this question, my main argument/explanation for the delay/obstruction over the 16 days of the shutdown was one of signaling: members of the GOP (and arguably some Democrats) had an incentive to demonstrate their ideological commitments through costly (in)action.  The debt ceiling/default deadline represented arguably a Rubicon of sorts, one that allowed all members—or, at least, Boehner & Cantor—break the impasse by allowing a floor vote.  This is because the (perceived) true costs of obstructing any longer were sufficiently large that they even “true conservatives” would rather get kicked out of office than pay them, and accordingly, many stripes of conservatives (some more faithful, some less) could and would “pool” at this point and vote to end the impasse.  (This explains/is consistent with the push by some to claim that default was either not going to happen on October 17th or, even more amusingly, that default is not that big of a deal.)

To the degree that this signaling argument holds water, it also predicts that the last-minute resolution would involve just a small “kick of the can down the road,” as happened.  That is, to the degree that “the fight” was potentially a useful signal of legislators’ true ideological stances, “signing up for another one” must also be a useful signal.  This would change only if some other event intervenes to explain why ideologically pure individuals would shy away from the fight, allowing heterogeneous members to once again “pool” on agreeing to resolve the fight “permanently.”[1]

The delicious irony here is that the incentive to fight over fiscal responsibility, the latest round of which appears to have been a public approval loss for the GOP, is arguably part of the cause of the fiscal responsibility problem (at least with respect to debt ceiling and shutdown inefficiencies) itself.  This is in line with the frequently noted historical frequency with which, in spite of the fact that Congress can at any time stop having to take such “tough votes,” the debt ceiling has been increased over 90 times since World War II: these votes provide opportunities for members of various factions to attempt to “signal their true colors” by standing fast for a little while in the face of a “must pass vote.”

There’s more here, but it’s Friday.  So, I’ll signal my true type by grabbing a beer and leaving you with this.

_______________

[1] I will leave aside for now the issue of plausible such events: one example, of course, would be a “grand bargain” that (say) cuts/controls entitlement spending in the future.

There is an excellent piece in the New York Times by Jeremy W. Peters describing the outcome of last night’s (temporary) resolution to the debt ceiling and funding showdown. A quote stuck out at me:

Others could not explain why it took so much damage, to their party and the millions of people inconvenienced and worse by the shutdown, to end up right where so many of them expected.

Well, there is a simple MathOfPolitics explanation for this.  In a nutshell, it’s called a “pooling equilibrium” in game theory.  The classic example of this behavior is the “job market signaling model,” due to 2001 Nobel Laureate Michael Spence. The basic idea is that there are two types of workers/applicants: “low” type and “high” type, and employers would prefer to hire high type workers.  The type of a worker, however, is asymmetrically known: the worker knows his or her type, and the potential employer does not.  Rather, the employer can observe whether the applicant (say) went to college, and — here’s “the rabbit” — high types find college more enjoyable/less costly than low types.[1]  Employers see an applicant’s education (college or no college) and hire based on that information alone.  In the model, and this is key for the analogy, education is in and of itself inefficient—it does not make a worker better.  Rather, it is obtained in equilibrium only to the degree that it helps the worker in question procure employment.[2]

In every equilibrium of such a situation, the low type of worker does not obtain a degree unless the high type obtains one, too.  This leads, when the value of employment is sufficiently high, to both types of workers getting a degree, and thus the degree is observationally unimportant: some people with degrees get jobs, some don’t—degrees seem (observationally) to be unimportant.[3]

In other words, at the “beginning of the game” in such situations, everybody knows that getting a degree is “pointless,” and yet everybody knows that everybody will get it. In the end, applicants are hired with the same probability that they would have been if the option to get a degree were prohibited/taken off the table, and yet every applicant pays a positive cost to get the degree nonetheless.  Rephrasing:

The model explains why workers will get degrees to “get a job,” only to end up right where they started.

Here, the analogy is that “the Republicans” (it’s easy language, but see here) were trying to signal their “ideological purity/conservatism/belief in small government/hatred for the Affordable Care Act.”  In the end, the stakes for signaling this—say, successful circumvention of a primary challenge from a right-wing candidate—were perceived to be so large, relative to the costs of temporary shutdown and some briefly rattled markets that all (House) Republicans, regardless of their true beliefs/purity, were willing to go along with the gambit.  Note that this story is in line with the party line vote behind such procedural undergirdings of unity as discussed in this post, and, more math/less politics, is based on the counterfactual reasoning that drives signaling models discussed in this post.

So, to summarize: a simple signaling model not only explains what happened over the past 17+ days, it also offers an explanation for why what happened was foreseeable.  Thus, rephrasing one more time:

Game theory already explained and arguably predicted that it would take so much damage … to end up right where so many of them expected.

With that, I leave you with this.

__________

[1] When I say “the rabbit,” I mean (in layman’s terms) the causal mechanism: the thing that makes the model work, that explains the phenomenon that the model is aimed at, that makes the audience ultimately say “ahhhh!”

[2] And, no, I won’t admit that this is essentially a model of getting a PhD in the social sciences.  BECAUSE I (RE)LEARNED ABOUT POOLING EQUILIBRIA GETTING MY PhD.

[3] In a nontrivial set of cases (when employment is less valuable relative than the low type of worker’s net marginal cost of obtaining a degree relative to that experienced by the high type of worker), degrees are obtained only by high types, all applicants with degrees—and only those applicants—are employed, and degrees “look” valuable, even though they generate no inherent value on their own.  This is the first of many (empirically) important conclusions obtained by this deceptively simple model.

The SHUTDOWN-CEILING SHOWDOWN has been depicted, typically, as “the Republicans versus [Democrats/Obama].”  The simple story here is that many people think of “the Republicans” as a unified whole, a group qua “unitary actor,” a collection of individuals who are acting as one.[1]  My recent posts (e.g. this, this, and this) and my recent blustering on the wireless have attempted to make clear that this understanding of the negotiations/stalemate obfuscate attempts to understand how the drama is playing out and the true causes of the “governing from-crisis-to-crisis” dynamic in DC.

The popular/informal understanding of the Republicans is an example of what is known as entitativity, which describes the perception of a group as an entity, generalized from its individual members.  My recent posts have pointed out that Boehner and the other leaders have multiple factions to worry about, and I argue that the varying incentives of the members of these various factions provide a key starting point in understanding the apparent irrationality of this bargaining process.

A very nice example of the language/framework I am discussing here is provided by this nice piece by Jonathan Chait, “Stop Fretting: The Debt-Ceiling Crisis Is Over!” who writes:

[1] I talk about the GOP here, but the basics apply to discussions of “the Democrats,” too.

[2] See Campbell, D. T. (1958). “Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregates of person as social entities.” Behavioural Science, 3, 14–25.

[3] Remember Blue Dog Democrats and Senator Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback?” Both parties have unity issues when the stakes get big and the votes get visible.

[4] Similarly, we could agree to not record the votes.  I’ve said before, if we could somehow get a debt ceilingincrease/CR approved with a voice vote, this would be over already.  And, of course, the House used to do something like this all the time, with “the Gephardt Rule.”  The GOP got rid of this in 1995.  But, as Sarah Binder notes, note that this particular rule would not save us much pain right now.

The Daily Kos has a piece authored by “War on Error” that linked to my piece today on H.Res. 368. I want to correct a misinterpretation in that piece.  The author states that

Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, tried to end the Government Shutdown with a Discharge Petition on October 12, 2013

This isn’t correct.  Van Hollen was attempting to offer a motion to “recede and concur,” which is typically privileged (and thus in order at any time when offered by any member) under Rule XXII, Section 4 of the House’s standing rules. This isn’t a motion to discharge in any sense, actually, as the bill in question (H.J.Res.59, which, as amended by the Senate, is the “clean CR”) isn’t in committee.  Rather, it is “in the state of disagreement”—or, less technically, “in limbo”—as the House and Senate have each passed different versions of the bill, and the House has insisted on its version and requested a conference with the Senate.

I understand the potential for confusion in my post, because I wrote “What this [special rule] does is further make discharge of a clean CR even harder.”  I was speaking/typing quickly and in reference to the general quest to get a floor vote on a clean CR.  I should have said

“What this [special rule] does is further make discharge of a clean CR even harder complicate the matter of getting a floor vote on a clean CR in the House.”

The privilege accorded to a motion to discharge a committee (i.e., to “put into play” a discharge petition duly signed by 218 members of the House) is contained in Rule XV, Section 2o f the House’s standing rules, and is accordingly unaffected by H.Res.368.  As I wrote earlier, the discharge petition is a highly unlikely route to reach a vote on a clean CR, and indeed would have had to be called up today or wait until October 28th.

Also, to be completely clear on this point, Van Hollen’s statement that “Democracy has been suspended” is hyperbole: H.Res.368 is a short and succinct special rule that was duly approved by a vote of 228-199.  Regardless of how one feels about the use of special rules in the House, it is (one of many forms of) democratic governance, and is (at least in my and many others’ opinions) clearly consistent with Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the US Constitution, which says (in part)

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings

With that, I leave you with this.

In a little noticed procedural move on October 1st, the House of Representatives “entered in to the stage of disagreement” with the Senate with respect to H.J.Res. 59, the “clean” continuing resolution (CR) that, as currently amended by the Senate, would reopen the government at the sequestered levels.[1]

Specifically, H.Res. 368 does two things.  The first is a tripartite bit of normal business in the “navette” system used by Congress to resolve differences between the two chambers’ versions of a bill,[2] stating that the House

“(1) takes from the Speaker’s table the joint resolution … (2) insists on its amendment, and (3) requests a conference with the Senate thereon.”

What this means, in short, is that the House collectively asserts that it is “done considering” the Senate’s version of the CR, and requests that the two have a “sit down” to work out the details of a compromise.  This is pretty normal.

The “trickery,” which I absolutely love, is the second part, which states

Any motion pursuant to clause 4 of rule XXII relating to House Joint Resolution 59 may be offered only by the Majority Leader or his designee.

What this little sentence does is further make discharge of a clean CR even harder.  I didn’t think about this charmingly arcane and surprisingly potent possibility when I wrote on discharge as a strategy to get a clean CR last week. (I haven’t seen anyone bring it up until this weekend, when the Democrats hit upon it.)  Under the standing rules of the House,

When the stage of disagreement has been reached on a bill or resolution with House or Senate amendments, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged.

What this means is that, conditional on the first part of H.Res. 368, under which H.J.Res. 59 reaches “the stage of disagreement,” any member of the House could at any time move that the House “recede and concur” with the Senate’s amendment, thereby approving the clean CR.

To be clear, this isn’t “undemocratic,” per se: H.Res. 368 was approved 228-199 (Roll Call 505)—an example of majority rule being used to make the rules arguably less “majoritarian.”[3]  Now let’s consider the MathOfPolitics of this move.

As I have argued before, in a variety of ways, the bargaining situation between the Democrats and Republicans in both chambers and President Obama is a decidedly “multi-player” situation and, importantly, one that the House GOP (and probably some of the House Democrats, too) would like to resolve in a nuanced manner.  In particular, voting “yea or nay” on the clean CR is a blunt and high-profile signal to members’ constituents about the members’ relative priorities.  To the degree that the House GOP leadership and/or rank-and-file wanted to negotiate something other than a clean CR (or even just wait for a combined “CR and debt ceiling deal,” this logic implies that they need to avoid the possibility of facing a “clean vote” on a clean CR.  To attempt to get a conference with the Senate,[4] the House had to enter into the stage of disagreement.  But this step also would hand a gun to the minority: they could at any time force exactly the vote the majority did not want.

So, putting the two components of the rule together—thereby meaning that the House could affirmatively “act upon the Senate’s CR” only by agreeing to hand this agenda power to Majority Leader Cantor—represents a classic example of a “credible logroll.” Note that the rule change limits the preexisting agenda powers of all members, not just those in the minority party. The Republican majority, in order to negotiate as a somewhat unified body, agreed to “bind their hands” from the potential temptation to “just agree to a clean CR.”

This type of procedural commitment strengthens the ability of Boehner and Cantor to “speak for” the House in the ensuing negotiations.  If the motion to recede and concur with the clean CR had been available to any member, as usual, then the Senate and/or President Obama could attempt to simply build a floor majority, without any special need to focus on/pay attention to the position of the House Leadership.  In a sense, the House signed away a limited, but durable, “power of attorney” to Boehner and Cantor on the CR negotiations.

With that, I leave you with this.

______________

[1] Remember, the sequester? HAHAHAHA.  Well, the Senate Democrats do.  Note the link between this position and my recent post on how appearing to lose may help one win.

[2] It’s tripartite because each of the three parts could in theory be debated and voted upon separately, but this is rarely if ever done in the House.  (They were accomplished here, as is pretty common, through a single vote on a “special rule” from the Rules Committee.) In the Senate, the analogue of this three-step process is one of the minority party’s secret weapons against the “nuclear options.”  But I will leave this to the side….for now?

[3] Hey, it’s my blog, so I’ll remind you that I’ve written and published (i.e., something more than a blog post) on this question.

[4] This might seem like a waste of time given hindsight, but I’ll simply point out that this step was necessary for the House to make it seem like the Senate was the roadblock to reopening the government (because the Senate did not agree to the conference).  Public opinion since October 1 seems to indicate this strategy failed to impress.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney just argued that, if the House Republicans won’t allow a default, why would they not give a longer extension of the debt ceiling, instead postponing another round of brinksmanship in 6 weeks, which—the argument goes—will merely lead to another extension, with arguably deleterious impact on the economy and financial markets.

I wanted to quickly point out that this appeal to subgame perfection—the game theoretic notion that equilibrium behavior should be based on credible threats—is intuitive, and arguably spot on…in a two player bargaining situation.  But, this is a bargaining game between (to simplify) Obama and the House Republican Conference.

Arguably, tea party members can’t—for signaling reasons similar to those described in this post—vote for along-term extension of the debt ceiling.  According to such an argument, this might be “the best that Boehner can get.”  However, there’s another story that is more interesting.  Suppose that Boehner and Obama each wish to achieve real reform, but both realize that any changes to the Affordable Care Act are a “no go.”  (That is, suppose they wish to reach “a grand bargain” on entitlements and taxes.)

Suppose they need time—like, more than 7 days—to work this out.  In order to get such a bargain approved without requiring Democratic support, Boehner has a problem without the debt ceiling as a “nuclear weapon in his back pocket.”  In particular, Boehner can use the very real (in legal terms) threat of default to bring his conference into the fold on a vote bundling the grand bargain with a debt ceiling extension.  Indeed, such a story would be a “win-win” for the GOP and Obama, who could presumably use the next couple of weeks to both take some credit for the bargaing and, arguably follow some strategy like the one I describe in this post.

The point is that the threat of breaching the debt ceiling can be useful to both Boehner and Obama in terms of keeping the rank-and-file in line on a substantive vote.  Finally, note that, to the degree that some reelection-minded members actually don’t want to default or keep the government shut down, they would also prefer a short-term extension in this case, so as to simultaneously provide electoral cover for real reform.

With that simultaneously hopeful and cynical note, I leave you with this.

Before getting into today’s post, I wanted to point out this excellent post about the discharge petition by Sarah Binder.  I was both embarrassed and relieved when I read it, because it predates and more eloquently states what I did about the practical difficulties with using the discharge petition.  Sarah knows her stuff so, as I explained to my daughter last night, I was sorry to have not read it before posting, but proud to have been thinking the same way.  (Sarah also describes the observed historical difficulty of this procedure in this post.) Credit paid where it is due, I’ll now turn away from the procedures for a second and focus on the floor.

Specifically, I was to consider the math behind the problem that Speaker John Boehner faces.  For simplicity, let’s presume Boehner that would like to move past the shutdown and would be perfectly happy with a “clean CR” that extends appropriations at the (sequestered) levels.[1] For a little over a week at least, Democrats have supported a “clean CR.” Recently, Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor have responded that such a measure would not pass the House.  Democrats have challenged them to try it, noting (somewhat disingenuously, as I’ll get to below) that, if Boehner and Cantor are right, then there’s no harm in trying. Right?

Wrong, for at least three reasons. First, many reasonably argue (e.g., David Karol) that the majority party collectively prefers to appear united, a presumption that is given some credit by the much ballyhooed “Hastert Rule.”[2]

The second reason is the one I will focus on first: uncertainty.  This explanation applies to why Boehner didn’t allow a vote on a clean CR prior to the shutdown.  In a nutshell, many members of both parties face a highly uncertain electorate in the following sense.  A vote on a clean CR represents trading-off two “goods” or, put another, choosing the lesser of two evils.  For the stereotypical “moderate” Republican, these are[3]

1. Responsibly funding the government, or
2. Modifying the Affordable Care Act.

A public “yea” vote on a clean CR—particularly given the presumption that the ultimate vote will be close—is a costly and visible signal that the member thinks (1) is more important than (2).  This public signal is, of course, a coarse one.  There is no nuance in a clean CR.  So, in order for a reelection-minded member to see a vote on a clean CR as desirable, he or she must know ex ante what vote he or she would like to cast.  I’ll simply assert that few members of the House are very certain about this—this is why whip counts like this one and this one are occupying our attention right now.

The third explanation for why a vote on a clean CR would be “bad for Boehner” applies only after he has taken the public stance that a clean CR would not pass.[5]  While many have argued that Boehner is in a pickle because bringing up a clean CR might lead to a revolt within the GOP and possible his removal as Speaker. I understand this argument, but I don’t think it’s nearly as potent as some others do, mostly because a replacement for Boehner must secure a majority of votes in the House.[6]  Rather, consider the following simplistic story: presume that Boehner wants to be seen as an effective leader with control of his caucus.  Accordingly, he doesn’t want to expose his members to pointless and electorally difficult-to-explain votes.  This is what distinguishes this from the multiple times the House has voted on the pointless measures to repeal the Affordable Care Act—these votes were not difficult for most, if not all, GOP members to explain to their base constituents.

So, what would Boehner gain from allowing a vote on a clean CR?  Well, if the clean CR passes, Boehner and Cantor look disingenuous, inept, and/or out-of-touch with their copartisans.  If the clean CR fails, then Boehner has exposed his members to a difficult-to-explain and pointless vote.  (And, to be even more common-sense about this, he would have let the Democrats (appear to) dictate the agenda of the House.)

Once you add into the mix the residual uncertainty about the debt ceiling, I think it’s a “no brainer” that Boehner and the GOP membership in the House stand a lot to lose in both perception and electoral terms from allowing a vote on a clean CR.  This logic further amplifies the point I made in my previous post about the importance of the Democrats finding something to “lose” in pursuit of an end to this mess.

With that, I leave you with this.

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[1] Remember the sequester…the fiscal cliff?  We were all older then…we’re much younger now.

[2] It is not infrequently brought up, but note that my explanation is arguably more consistent with the history of Boehner’s leadership, because he has violated the Hastert rule on several high-profile votes.

[3] For a stereotypical Democrat, these are

1. Responsibly funding the government, or
2. Fighting to undo the effects of the sequester.

[4] Or a “sincere delegate” seeking to faithfully represent some notion of his or her constituents’ interests.  I know, I know…but it’s possible.

[5] Arguably, it also applied with a slightly more circuitous reasoning as soon as the House passed the first “CR with strings” a couple of weeks ago.  But, I’ll leave that for another day.  Perhaps sadly, I expect I’ll have a chance to write about this in about 9 days, if Treasury Secretary Lew’s estimates are right.

[6] Unlike the Majority Leader position and other caucus/conference leadership position, the Speakership isn’t controlled by the majority party.  Accordingly, the Democrats can protect Boehner simply by voting “against his removal,” (they need not vote for Boehner), presuming that some GOP members would stand with Boehner.