STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we follow up on the larger meaning of a vote in Congress. Lawmakers approved a Trump administration request to claw back funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Some voted yes. Even though they said the request was so vague, they did not know what they were voting for. One was Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
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THOM TILLIS: We have no earthly idea what specific cuts will occur, but I'm willing to give OMB and the president the benefit of the doubt that they're going to be responsible cuts.
INSKEEP: Tillis voted for the measure that he said he had no earthly idea about, as did Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROGER WICKER: Please give us specific information about where the cuts will come. Let's not make a habit of this. Let's not consider this a precedent.
INSKEEP: All this raises a question - did Congress abdicate its job and its traditional power of the purse? Jonathan Martin has seen a lot of politics. He's a columnist with Politico, and he's on the line once again. Jonathan, good morning.
JONATHAN MARTIN: Morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: How differently did this Congress act last week than Congress has in the past?
MARTIN: Well, it's so rare to see Congress give up perhaps its most prized power, which is the ability to control federal spending. You know, lawmakers crave the ability to direct spending in their states and districts. And to see this, I think, underlines, Steve, the loyalty that the Republican Party today has to Donald Trump and his White House. This is not about the underlying package of cuts to various programs for public broadcasting. This is about saluting what Trump and his White House wants and voting the party line, and doing so, as those clips make clear, without even knowing what the actual substance of the bill is.
INSKEEP: I want to underline this. These are taxpayer-funded jobs. We are taxpayers. We pay Congress to be lawmakers...
MARTIN: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...To be assertive in these...
MARTIN: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...Taxpayer-funded jobs. Did they abandon their responsibility?
MARTIN: Well, it's hard to conclude otherwise if they're openly saying that they don't know what they're voting on but they're still going to be toeing the party line. And it's not terribly different, Steve, than the big piece of legislation that they passed earlier this month, the tax bill, I guess, the tax bill-plus, you could call it, in which I think a lot of these lawmakers were simply voting in an up or down referendum on Donald Trump. And that's really what this is all about. Increasingly, politics has become tribal. It's about the front of the jersey rather than the back of the jersey, to put it in sports terms, not about the individual. It's about voting for the team. The team, in this case, is Team Trump.
INSKEEP: I think if you're in favor of Trump or just an outside analyst, you can say that Trump was fairly clever to cram everything into that one giant bill because it became an up or down vote on Trump.
MARTIN: Including, by the way, raising the debt ceiling, which your listeners know is anathema for a lot of the sort of far-right crowd in today's Congress. And the fact that that was put in the bill was precisely because it gave those folks no choice when everything else was also in the bill. Yes.
INSKEEP: Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat, told his fellow senators that they were abdicating something that they really like, abdicating their own power, and that they would come to regret it.
MARTIN: Yes.
INSKEEP: What does happen now to the much more bipartisan appropriations process, where traditionally...
MARTIN: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Especially in the Senate, lawmakers from both parties weigh in, and they come to a compromise?
MARTIN: Well, it was no coincidence that the lawmakers who did vote against this in the Republican caucus and the Senate all happened to be appropriators. Collins, Murkowski and McConnell all understand the power of the purse because they've been on that panel. You make a really good point, Steve. There's an old joke about Congress that there's three parties - there's Democrats, Republicans and appropriators. The appropriators always found themselves to be the most bipartisan members because they were going over the goodies. They were trying to figure out who could get what for their states and districts in terms of federal spending. And this is the opposite of that.
You know, this is not only giving up institutional power. It is cutting spending rather than finding ways to direct it for your political benefit, which, of course, was the way for decades and decades in Congress. And Schatz raises an important point. What happens now when a Democrat is in charge in the White House, and the Republicans in Congress are not going to want to give up their spending authority? But there's now a precedent set.
INSKEEP: Chuck Schumer suggested this ruins the appropriations process, and Democrats won't play ball in a few weeks when they need to get a budget done. Do you believe that?
MARTIN: I think it's going to make everything harder, including keeping the government open. It's hard to see any goodwill left between either party, Steve, on the Hill. And I think, given that, that we are headed toward at least the threat of a shutdown this fall.
INSKEEP: Jonathan Martin of Politico, it's always a pleasure to hear from you. Thanks.
MARTIN: Thank you, Steve.
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