How MAGA Can Stuff DOGE Back in Its Box and Win the Day on H1B | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Somebody tell Steve Bannon: Here is a strategy for MAGA to win on H1B. Congress is so closely divided that even a few members hold veto power over the House’s choice of a Speaker. Take these steps: This week, form a MAGA caucus (minimum size: four. See below). Then, when Congress reconvenes at noon ET on January 3, the MAGA caucus should deny their votes to any Speaker nominee. No speaker can be elected. Without a Speaker, the House cannot function, let alone count and certify the results of the Electoral College so that Trump can take the oath of office on January 20. The only way out: The Republican Party agrees to the MAGA caucus demands on H1B policy. The MAGA caucus then allows the vote for a speaker to proceed to a conclusion.

That’s it, really. That’s the post. But I’ll expand a bit on details of the strategy, comment on H1B controversy over the past few days, discuss what the demand might be, and conclude.

Strategy Background

The idea of using the Speaker’s election as leverage comes from Chad Pergram, who covers Congress for FOX. He writes in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to failing to elect a House speaker quickly” (an earlier version appeared in Water Cooler)

[T]he speaker’s election on Jan. 3 poses a special challenge. Here’s the bar for Johnson – or anyone else: The speaker of the House must win an outright majority of all members casting ballots for someone by name. In other words, the person with the most votes does not win.

The head-count:

The House clocks in at 434 members with one vacancy [Gaetz]…. This is the breakdown when the Congress starts: 219 Republicans to 215 Democrats…. But the speaker’s election on Jan. 3 poses a special challenge. Here’s the bar for Johnson – or anyone else: The speaker of the House must win an outright majority of all members casting ballots for someone by name. In other words, the person with the most votes does not win.

This is why it took McCarthy so many ballots to win in January 2023.

So let’s crunch the math for Mike Johnson. If there are 219 Republicans and four voted for someone besides him – and all Democrats cast ballots for Jeffries, the tally is 215-214. But there’s no speaker. No one attained an outright majority of all members casting ballots for someone by name. The magic number is 218 if all 434 members vote.

By rule, this paralyzes the House[1]. The House absolutely, unequivocally, cannot do anything until it elects a speaker. Period.

Therefore, the Maga Caucus should consist of a minimum of four members. More:

This also means that the House cannot certify the results of the Electoral College, making Trump the 47th president of the United States on Jan. 6.

The failure to elect a speaker compels the House to vote over and over…

And over… and… over…

Until it finally taps someone.

McCarthy’s election incinerated 15 ballots over five days two years ago.

Of course, nobody wants that. Which is why the Republican Party should accede to the MAGA Caucus’s demands. In writing, naturally.

I am by no means an expert in Republican politics or factions; I came up as a Democrat. But following the H1B controversy on the Twitter, it struck me forcibly than many MAGA supporters were in fact very well versed in policy, history, and data, and deployed their knowledge effectively against Musk and his tech bros. For example, H1B is not about importing workers who are “highly skilled” (a pervasive, unexamined, and dishonest, tech bro talking point). That’s why, for example, Trump brought Mar-a-Lago waiters into the country under H1B. Rather, H1B is about importing workers who are cheap and compliant, because management can hold the threat of visa removal over their heads. That means that other things being equal, management will always prefer H1Bs over citizens (the power imbalance, as idpol types would say).

If MAGA is a party faction whose salient feature is loyalty to Trump, the MAGA caucus strategy just outlined will never be adopted. If MAGA is about policy, there is at least a chance. Here, the contrast between Democrats and MAGA is very great. It’s hard to imagine a furious debate over policy taking place among Democrats in public, one with very little deference to leaders shown. It occurs to me that Democrat charges of authoritarian followership and cultishness are, well, projection. It’s also hard for me to imagine any Democrats having the stones to adopt the MAGA caucus strategy. But perhaps MAGA does!

H1B Controversy

Axios has a good timeline of the controversy, in “Trump sides with Musk in H-1B fight“:

The MAGA-DOGE skirmishes started last Sunday, with anti-immigration and anti-Indian vitriol against Trump’s pick of venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his AI advisor.

I missed the Krishnan “vitriol.” Sad to say, but when so many “body shops” (InfoSys, etc.) are based in India, and important Indian cititzens, it’s easy to see why animus might develop.

It escalated into full conflict Thursday when Musk ally and DOGE co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy took to X to blast American “mediocrity” culture. Musk defended Ramaswamy, and the two sides started engaging in an increasingly bitter war of words.

I entered when Vivek posted his screed. Suffice to say that you could have swapped out Vivek’s words and swapped in Hillary’s “deplorables” speech, and nobody would have noticed. On the bright side, it’s wonderfully clarifying to see that leadership in both parties hates the working class.

On Friday afternoon, Musk doubled down, saying MAGA adherents who continued to blast immigration and the tech community were “contemptible fools,” later clarifying he was talking about “racists” who would “absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.”

That “later clarifying” is doing a lot of work; it’s almost as if somebody handed Musk the talking point. And then:

Just before midnight Friday, Musk once again defended the H-1B program in vulgar, all-caps terms, saying the program was the key to the success of his (and other big American) companies.

“Take a big step back and F–K YOURSELF in the face.I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” Musk wrote.

Oh? How exactly? The Axios timeline gives out before a series of engagements between Musk and MAGA, where MAGA beats Musk like a gong on data and policy. This is a very long thread, but gives the flavor:

And:

And:

Oh look. Labor arbitrage! To which Musk responds, meek as a lamb:

Quite the change in tone, eh? From ” F–K YOURSELF in the face” to “easily fixed”! It’s almost as if Musk got a call, isn’t?

Of course, if H1B were that “easy to fix,” it would have been fixed along ago. And it’s quite revealing that it took multiple blows to Musk’s head and body over many hours by MAGA with skin in the game who actually understood the data and the policy issues to get whoever in Susie Wiles’s office monitors Musk’s tweets to pick up the phone.

The Demand

Based solely on having consumed vast numbers of Tweets on H1Bs, my conclusion is that Musk is wrong to want “reform.” The purpose of H1B is, after all, labor arbitrage: cheap, compliant labor. If labor arbitrage is reformed away from H1B, then there’s no reason for it in the first place. If not, it should be abolished entirely. If Elon wants to import brain geniuses instead of waiters for Mar-a-Lago, we have another category for that: O-1 (“O-1 Visa: Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement“).

So that is my demand, ill-informed though it may be: Abolish H1B; reform O-1 as needed.

However, get the commitment to meet the demands in writing, for three reasons:

First, my takeaway from the controversy is that the H1B supporters — i.e., DOGE — are fundamentally dishonest; they held onto their “highly skilled labor” talking point like grim death, even that MAGA was easily able to show it was a lie (Sterling’s thread was the best response, but there were many, many others that were good too). Anything not reduced to writing will be gamed or not delivered on.

Second, it was amusing to see the cuddle puddle of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and media service providers — i.e., DOGE — acting as enforcers as soon as Elon took the “reform” line; they used the same phrases and tactics Democrat enforcers do! (“Now is not the time,” “one team,” “time to move on”). So, with dishonest party enforcers, yes, get it in writing.

Finally, I’m sick of DOGE just tweeting it out. It’s amazing to see a heated policy argument play out in public, but Elon’s commitments are worth the digits they’re written with. Elon tweeting “Reforming H1B is good, actually” and a whole cheering section chanting “The controversy is over” just doesn’t make it[2]. Get the commitment to meet the demands in writing.

Conclusion

Let me close with words from the candidate who, if the Democrats hadn’t stabbed him in the back, might have forestalled Trump:

I’ve gotta say, quoting the President of College Republicans wasn’t on my Bingo card. But I don’t think quoting Bernie Sanders was on his Bingo Card either.

So far — Hello, President Romney! — Republicans have become more like MAGA, not MAGA like Republicans. Perhaps the H1B controversy will show whether this tendency will continue, or stall.

NOTES

[1] It may be that in extreme situations — and multiple votes for Speaker are not extreme — there are ways out. From “House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House“:

Under the modern practice, the Speaker is elected by a majority of Members-elect voting by surname, a quorum being present.

As Pergram says. More (citations omitted):

In two instances the House agreed to choose and subsequently did choose a Speaker by a plurality of votes but confirmed the choice by majority vote. In 1849 the House had been in session 19 days without being able to elect a Speaker, no candidate having received a majority of the votes cast. The voting was viva voce, each Member responding to the call of the roll by naming the candidate for whom he voted. Finally, after the fifty-ninth ballot, the House adopted a resolution declaring that a Speaker could be elected by a plurality. In 1856 the House again struggled over the election of a Speaker. Ballots numbering 129 had been taken without any candidate receiving a majority of the votes cast. The House then adopted a resolution permitting the election to be decided by a plurality. On both of these occasions, the House ratified the plurality election by a majority vote.

So if history is any guide, 129 ballots is the baseline for changing the procedure Pergram describes. Comments from Congressional rules mavens welcome.

[2] Re: President-elect Trump, once a Speaker is chosen, the election is certified, and he takes the oath of office, a happy ending would look like this: “Congratulations, you’re still my agent.”