A few hours ago Rep. Hartzler (R-Missouri -Mississippi-) sent out an email to her constituents with the following claim:
bq. We’ve passed a bill known as the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. It states that if the Senate fails to pass a measure before Wednesday to keep the government funded for the rest of 2011, the long-term bill passed by the House in February becomes law.
This strikes me as technically correct – the House did pass this law – but potentially misleading. (As an aside, there is a nice write up at “Patterico’s Pontifications”:http://patterico.com/2011/04/04/whoops-that-horribly-unconstitutional-bill-passed-by-house-republicans-is-probably-constitutional-after-all/ about the constitutionality of “hereby enacted into law” bills.) What Hartzler failed to mention in her letter to her constituents is that since the Senate has not passed the Government Shutdown Prevention Act, it is not law either, meaning that HR 1 (the long-term bill referred to in her email) is still not going to become law. In other words, whether or not the government shuts down later this week has nothing to do with the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. Here’s how the full paragraph reads:
bq. We’ve passed a bill known as the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. It states that if the Senate fails to pass a measure before Wednesday to keep the government funded for the rest of 2011, the long-term bill passed by the House in February becomes law. It also provides that in the event of a government shutdown lasting more than a day – Members of Congress and the President will not be paid. House members are hoping this will prompt the Senate to pass a bill allowing both chambers to work quickly to resolve any differences. According to numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, America is borrowing $3.83 billion EVERY DAY to pay for our spending. The time to act is now.
So my question is, is Hartzler opening herself up to potential criticism from her constituents if/when the government does shut down, many of whom now probably think that she (and the Republican Party in the House) have just made sure this can’t happen? More generally, does anyone out there have any research on whether legislators pay any price for (potentially) misleading constituents in this kind of manner? I can see why she wrote what she did – it makes the Republicans look like they are trying to avoid a government shut down – but it also seems kind of risky to me. But maybe these kinds of things don’t tend to lead lasting antagonism towards sitting members of the legislature? Would welcome references to any relevant studies.