Next week, Congress will return from its third vacation since the fiscal year began in October, just in time to start turning off the lights in Washington as the first deadline to fund the government looms on March 1.
Republicans in the House will attempt to pass 4 of 12 appropriations bills to avoid the start of the shutdown process. They will have to pass the remaining 8 appropriations bills by March 8 to escape having to explain why it takes grown men and women so long to put a number on national priorities.
Perhaps they all went to public school and can't count past a trillion. Whatever the reason, we are likely to see another stop-gap funding bill — the dreaded "Continuing Resolution" (CR) — to keep the wheels spinning.
The House GOP is hopeless.
“I’m worried. Of all the scares we’ve had since the last fiscal year, I think this is going to be the scariest. I think we could be in a world of hurt,” said a Senate GOP aide. “I don’t know if it’ll be a partial or a full, but I think the chances of a shutdown are the highest we’ve had this fiscal year.”
For those rooting for a shutdown, I would point to history. There's never been a shutdown that saved the taxpayers any money. What usually happens is that House and Senate negotiators and the White House get together and start adding zeroes to the agencies' budgets. It's also a perfect excuse for even Republicans to vote for a tax increase.
A shutdown would be bad so, of course, Republicans are going to make sure that it happens. They will add several riders to any CR — "poison pills" Democrats call them — that the folks back home might love but that Democrats would rather jump off a cliff than vote for.
Accordingly, the Democrats sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson warning him about "poison pills" and other deadly add-ons to the CR.
“We are extremely concerned that the House Republican Leadership continues to advocate for policy riders that have been shown time and time again to be unpopular with the American people and obstacles to completing the appropriations process,” the letter states, according to a copy obtained by the Washington Examiner.
“Again, after a series of missed deadlines and missed opportunities, advancing appropriations legislation free of poison pill provisions represents the only responsible path forward. We owe it to the American people to expeditiously pass appropriations bills that meet the urgent needs of today and invest in America’s future.”
GOP to Dems: "Not a chance."
Far-right Republicans want to try again to pass amendments that are non-starters for all Democrats, including defunding the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, prohibiting funding for gun registries and red-flag gun laws, and blocking attempts by the Biden administration to remove parts of the southern border wall.
The Senate's majority Democrats would never consider any of those riders. And Joe Biden would never sign a CR that had contained them. With the Senate and White House a no-go, why bother at all?
No one, especially those pushing the DOA amendments, can answer coherently.
Johnson will try to get the first four appropriations bills passed but he says he may need more time. Meanwhile, some Republicans are urging Johnson to damn the right-wing and go full speed ahead, negotiating with Democrats on the appropriations committee to bring a package acceptable to a solid majority of the House to the floor.
McHenry, chair of the Financial Services Committee, called the current shutdown threat “a preventable disaster” — one that might have been avoided if party leaders had moved the spending bills late last year instead of kicking the process into an election year.
He’s urging Johnson to resist the ultimatums from his conservative wing and move forward with whatever agreements emerge from the talks between appropriators, who have been working furiously through the holiday recess to finalize their bills in time for the first deadline next Friday.
All this and a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion too? How'd we get so lucky?
These are not serious people and until all parties — Republicans, Democrats, Independents, right, left, center, and everything in between — stop playing games and get serious, we're going to be watching "Shutdown Theater" indefinitely.
