Bismarck in the White House?

 The Kingdom of Prussia in 1862 was experiencing a constitutional crisis.  After centuries of bureaucratic absolutism, the kingdom in 1848 had survived a revolution and the King had granted a constitution giving the Parliament or Landtag the power of the purse.  Now the government had proposed a reorganization of the military to downplay the role of reserve troops, who included many politicians, and increase the term of service for conscripts.  A majority in parliament refused to pass an annual budget until the government yielded on the army issue.  

The Prussian King William, a conservative, appointed the noble diplomat Otto von Bismarck, who had no national political experience, as Prime Minister.  Claiming that the constitution could not possibly be interpreted to prevent the government from functioning, Bismarck said that if the Landtag refused to pass a new budget, he would continue taxing and spending based upon the budget from the previous year.  He exerted pressure on the civil service, which included a good many supporters of parliament, to conform to his views, making political loyalty a requirement for promotion.  He began subsidizing friendly newspapers and had the king sign an edict allowing the government to shut down opposition newspapers.  In the next year he called new elections, only to see the parliamentary opposition return a greater majority.  An aggressive foreign policy gave Bismarck a way out of his domestic impasse.  In 1864 Prussia and Austria fought a successful war against Denmark, and in 1866 Prussia defeated Austria and Bismarck created a new North German Confederation dominated by Prussia.  Then, for the first time, the Prussian Landtag retroactively legitimated his four years of government without an agreed budget.

The United States, I believe, is about to go through something similar.  Article I, section 8 of our constitutions gives the Congress the power "to borrow money on the credit of the United States,"  and this month the debt ceiling has to be increased to keep the government running.  Minority leader Chuck Schumer, under heavy pressure from some of his fellow Senators and from the House, has decided to take advantage of the filibuster rule to refuse to increase it unless the Republicans agree to undo provisions of the "big, beautiful bill" relating to health care, in particular.  These include the repeal of new Medicaid eligibility restrictions and forthcoming reductions of subsidies for insurance under Obamacare, which may deprive millions of Americans of health insurance.  

The chances of the Administration and its congressional allies giving in to these demands, in my opinion, are the same as the chances of Bismarck giving in to the Landtag, that is, zero.  I don't think the President is going to give up major portions of his signature achievement to a minority within the Senate--and if the same controversy were taking place with the roles reversed, I don't think that I would want a Democratic president to give in, either.  Unless the Democrats cave in at the eleventh hour, that leaves two possibilities.  The first is that the Republican Senate leadership will find a way around the filibuster rule so as to pass the continuing resolution on a simple majority vote.  Majority Leader John Thune has already done this with respect to several other important issues, some budget-related, in recent months, and this is probably the most likely outcome.  The second possibility is that Trump, like Bismarck, will simply disregard the plain language of the constitution and claim authority to borrow the money to keep the government going whether Congress passes a continuing resolution or not.  That would surely provoke a court challenge, but the Supreme Court has always been reluctant to intervene in disputes between the executive and legislative branches.

The wars Bismarck fought, both for foreign policy reasons and to secure his position at home, created a new domestic consensus within Prussia and ultimately within Germany as a whole.  Trump does not seem to have any intention of fighting a war of sufficient scale to do that, even if one were readily available.  I expect the US eventually to emerge from its current crisis with some new consensus established, but I can't as yet see exactly how that will happen.