John Boehner says he agrees that Democrats would benefit from a shutdown. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Boehner: Dems win in shutdown

Speaker John Boehner is warning his Republican colleagues that Democrats would “win” a government shutdown and the GOP would suffer a political catastrophe if the federal government runs out of money at the end of this week.

“The Democrats think they benefit from a government shutdown. I agree,” Boehner said during a closed-door, 90-minute meeting on House Republicans on Monday night, according to several lawmakers who attended the session.


Boehner’s opinion was quickly backed up GOP lawmakers who were serving in Congress during 1995, when former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) squared off with then-President Bill Clinton by shutting down the government twice. Reps. Don Young (Alaska), Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) and Buck McKeon (Calif.) — a close ally — supported Boehner’s position. Dozens of other Republicans rallied to support Boehner as well, in a moment that one GOP insider called a “turning point” for House Republicans.

“My view is that a government shutdown doesn’t benefit anyone necessarily, but if one party or the other is going to get an edge, it’s probably the Democrats. I agree with the speaker there,” Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) told POLITICO. “If you look at the government shutdown of 1995, it guaranteed President Clinton’s reelection. And that’s what this would do. If you want to cede the presidential race in 2012, you shut down the government.”

But while Boehner may have backing from the old veterans in his camp, he’s run headlong into the tea-party group of House Republicans who believe that Obama and Senate Democrats would come off the worse if a shutdown actually takes place.

These hard-line Republicans, not all of whom are freshmen, have forced Boehner to play hardball with the Democrats or face a potential threat to his own survival as speaker. This hard-core faction is insisting on no less than the $61 billion spending cut package passed by the House in February, and they’ve refused to back to any proposal that includes smaller reductions. Reid and Senate Democrats have pushed a much smaller reduction of $33 billion. As of Tuesday afternoon, the potential of a shutdown was growing, but could be headed off by a Boehner offer of $40 billion in cuts plus certain policy riders favored by GOP lawmakers.

The split among Republicans breaks somewhat along generational lines, but even more clearly between those who have served in government — either in the state, local or federal level — and those who have never done so.

The Republicans favoring a shutdown are convinced the political landscape is radically different this time around. They believe the power of the president’s “bully pulpit” isn’t as overwhelming as it was in Clinton’s time, and more voters will sympathize with the GOP’s efforts to shut down the government.

“This is not 1995,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who is considering a gubernatorial run in the Hoosier State. “We have the internet, we have talk radio, we have an infrastructure to get our message out.”

Pence amplified this view during a Monday interview on ABC News, saying that Democrats would suffer more than the GOP.

“Look — if liberals in the Senate and in this administration want to continue to play political games instead of accepting very modest budget cuts, then if they’d rather embrace a government shutdown than make a down payment on fiscal responsibility, then I say shut it down,” Pence said on the “Top Line” webcast. “And I still feel very strongly that way.”

“The people who seem to be afraid of a government shutdown … are worried about getting elected in two more years,” Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) told the Washington Post. “I’m worried about having to go home and tell the folks that I grew up with, and intend to spend the rest of my life with, that I’m a liar.”

Others in this group include Reps. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) and Raul Labrador (Idaho), who called out Boehner during Monday’s session.

Pitted against the “pro-shutdown” crowd are veteran GOP lawmakers, especially those who were serving in the House in 1995.

One close Boehner ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called the idea of a shutdown “a disaster in the making for Republicans.”

“There’s people in the conference who their eyes on other jobs, they’re the ones behind this,” said the lawmaker. “You have other conservatives who see this as a vote of conscience, but I think they’re totally wrong on this. It’s not the way to govern.”

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) has a famous slogan it plastered above the door in his congressional office in the Rayburn House Office Building.

“Politics is not about ideological purity or moral self-righteousness, it’s about governing. And if you cannot compromise you cannot govern,” Simpson says, reciting the Henry Clay quote.

In the midst of Washington’s hottest budget negotiations in more than a decade, Simpson, a former statehouse speaker in Boise, says congressional negotiations are that simple — compromise is everything.

“That’s the reality,” he says flatly. “You’ve gotta get what you can get when you can get it.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it generational,” Simpson added of the divisions emerging among House Republicans over the political fallout from a shutdown, or multiple shutdowns, throughout the year.

“There are obviously some people who have some different views on how to get to where we want to go. It’s not really a debate within the conference about the ultimate goal, it’s a debate on what’s the strategy to get there. That’s really it more than anything,” Simpson said. “I think the more experience you have within a legislative body you start to understand how you get things done, and that’s by working with people who disagree with you and trying to find any common ground. And sometimes that’s hard for people.”

House Republican leaders have been meeting constantly with their conference in recent weeks to evaluate where lawmakers stand, especially after 54 House Republicans voted against the last stopgap funding measure that is currently keeping the government’s doors open. Wednesday morning will be the third closed-door meeting of the week.

There has been a simmering frustration among some in the party over several flashpoints. First, Boehner told the GOP Conference on Monday that those who voted against the last CR “abandoned” him, a message that some lawmakers privately said was overly emotional, but it follows in the Boehner mentality as seeing House Republicans as a team sharing the same political fate.

Another lingering concern is that Boehner has not been committed to a specific dollar figure of budget cut. Rather, Boehner has just kept repeating that he’d fight for the largest number, and that $33 billion is not enough.

“Yeah I think we need to get on with business. That’s what I came here for,” said freshman Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa) of whether it was time for the rank and file to hear a number they could agree to. “This is very frustrating to me. I couldn’t run my business this way.”

“We trust that they’re in negotiations and he’s made it clear, the leadership has made it clear to me that we do have the same goals. That’s what I need to know,“ Barletta said.

— Marin Cogan contributed to this report.