How is it that Republicans get to stymie government based on their control of just one-half of one branch of government, the House of Representatives?
They threaten to block nominations of all but the most conservative presidential appointees. In cases where they don't like the agency in question, they refuse to confirm anyone. This includes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to block not just Elizabeth Warren, but any appointee at all. The same fate likely awaits the National Labor Relations Board, whose rulings Republicans don't like; with expiring terms, the NLRB will soon lack a quorum of members, including its chairman.
The right is also undoing a variety of laws by going after appropriations, so that agencies lack the enforcement personnel to protect consumers, workers, and citizens generally. The Dodd-Frank Act is being undone by stealth.
Rendering the government unable to function serves two Republican purposes. First, it advances the longstanding GOP goal of undermining the public sector. Second, it weakens the ability of the Obama administration to deliver for voters in a national economic crisis and softens him up for an election defeat. If government can't do its job anyway, defaulting on the national debt is a mere detail.
Is the Obama administration entirely without power to contest this outrageous behavior?
In a few cases, the need to extend expiring laws gives the Administration some leverage. For instance, No Child Left Behind is about to expire. Both sides want reforms, but for now Congress is deadlocked. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has threatened to just give more and more states waivers from the law's perverse rules on "failing schools" unless Congress acts. But this leverage (and resolve) is the exception.
One thing Obama could do is to make more of a political issue of the Republicans' narrow obstructionism. It would remind voters why they agree with Democrats on most questions, and it would win the president some points for leadership and toughness.
It's one thing to look for common ground early in a new presidency, another to be conciliatory on the eve of an election when the other party is stopping at nothing to destroy you.
