Congress (Probably) Dodges Government Shutdown, Again! (Like Literally For A Week)
Yup, this again!
Congress will vote today — probably! — to pass a short-term extension of some federal funding to keep (some of) the government from shutting down. For a week at least! That’s supposed to give lawmakers enough time to finalize a spending package to keep the government running through September 30, the end of the fiscal year. The last short-term spending bill was passed in January, which is how we got here.
As the Washington Post explains (gift link), the deal will extend funding for 20 percent of the government until Friday, March 6, so agencies like the Departments of Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture won’t shut down at 12:01 Saturday morning. It also extends the deadline for funding the rest of the government (including the Defense, Justice and State Departments, and many more) until March 22 instead of March 8.
Thanks, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), for November’s stupid split-funding plan that makes writing a simple explainer impossible! You guys do shit like this to make government even more complicated and confusing than it already is, so people don’t know what the hell is going on, don’t you?
This makes the fourth short-term spending bill, or “continuing resolution” (CR) that’s been necessary to keep the government open since September. But maybe it’ll be the last one, if both houses can actually pass real funding bills for the full government in a week. Or, as we said, for part of the government in a week, and then the rest of the government in three weeks.
The Post points out that now the trick will be to get the CR passed by both houses before funding expires at the end of Friday night, and that “[even] after the deal was reached, it’s not certain that Congress will be able to act in time.”
And why is that? As ever, it smells like rightwing House Republicans! For starters, the loonies in the House Freedom Caucus don’t especially like the idea of following through on agreements already reached between the White House and congressional leaders, so why not blow everything up?
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who chairs the Freedom Caucus, said he preferred a year-long funding bill that would trigger automatic spending cuts. He added the House should attach strong new immigration restrictions, aid for Israel and an overhauled foreign intelligence surveillance bill to the funding deal and dare the Democratic-controlled Senate to reject it.
Such a proposal would almost surely trigger a shutdown, which is the preference of the Freedom Caucus, members have said.
This is where we point out that the House has already been blocking a separate bill that would provide aid to Israel, because it also gives aid to Ukraine, and Putin’s Pals in the House and Mar-a-Lago don’t want that.
And of course, if Good got his wish to just pass a CR that would run until September 3— which he won’t — those automatic spending cuts, aka sequestration, would even apply to the few parts of government Republicans actually want to fund, like the Defense Department and border security.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) warned yesterday in a Senate floor speech,
‘“If our House Republican colleagues of goodwill want to avert a shutdown — if they want to govern responsibly as they say they do — then they must resist the centrifugal pull of the extreme hard Right who want to burn everything down, who openly use the threat of a shutdown to push their extreme agenda.”
Schumer didn’t name any of these Republicans of goodwill, who we suspect may be mythical.
Also, as Reuters reports this morning, even if the House passes a CR — probably needing the help of Democrats again, which could trigger a rightwing move to get rid of Johnson — it’s still possible that Republicans in the Senate could delay things further by demanding weirdass rightwing amendments as the price of fast-tracking a vote before the funding deadline tomorrow night.
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican maverick with a track record for delaying must-pass legislation before, said he and other hardliners could consent to such a deal if allowed to offer amendments to reduce spending and the federal debt.
"We won't just say we're going to roll over and let them continue to ruin the country," Paul told Reuters.
So probably they’ll offer their amendments, have them voted down, and then the bill will be rushed over to the White House for Biden’s signature at the last possible moment.
Then next week Republicans can get to work demanding boneheaded rightwing priorities like restricting abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, refusing to fund food programs, making sure mentally-incompetent veterans can buy guns, and the like all over again!
THIS AGAIN!
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please keep our operations from partially shutting down by subscribing, or if a one-time donation is more your style, it’s ours, too!
An little OT, Its an nice to see that Lynda Carter is an good person in RL and deserves the mantle of Wonder Woman. Unlike some of her fellow heroes. (Cough Dean Cain dough)
Both Rand Paul and his dad were big on wanting the U.S. back on the gold standard, which is one of the stupidest economic ideas ever. Both Pauls have acted like any Federal spending comes directly out of their personal pockets. So Rand Paul's antics are predictable but he's nutso, really another word for libertarian.