There’s really not much drama going on in Congress lately, but a manufactured crisis could shut down the federal government right in the middle of the general election season, as I explained at New York:
Kicking cans down the road is an essential skill in Congress, particularly when partisan control of the government is divided, as it is now. Routine decisions like keeping the federal government operating must await posturing over essential laws each party wants to enact but does not have the power to impose. And that’s why there seems to be a perpetual threat of a government shutdown — which is what happens if either house of Congress or the president refuses to sign off on spending authority — and why Washington typically lurches along from stopgap spending deal to stopgap spending deal.
The most recent stopgap spending deal expires on September 30, the last day of Fiscal Year 2024. There’s been some back-and-forth about the length of the next stopgap based on changing calculations of which party is likely to be in the ascendancy after the November election. But this normal bit of maneuvering suddenly turned fraught as Donald Trump bigfooted his way into the discussion on Truth Social not long before he debated Kamala Harris:
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO “STUFF” VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN — CLOSE IT DOWN!!!”
The backstory is that in April, when Speaker Mike Johnson was feeling some heat from the House Freedom Caucus over allegedly “caving” to Democrats in the last stopgap spending fight, the Louisianan scurried down to Mar-a-Lago to huddle with the Boss. Johnson announced he would do Trump’s bidding by introducing a bill to outlaw noncitizen voting, the phantom menace that is one of Trump’s favorite stolen-election fables. Those of us who understood that noncitizen voting (of which there is no actual evidence beyond a handful of votes among hundreds of millions) is already illegal shrugged it off as a MAGA red-meat treat.
But Johnson forged ahead with a House vote to approve the so-called SAVE Act. After the Senate ignored it, he included it in the first draft of his new stopgap bill. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, figured it would be dropped when negotiations got serious. But then Trump made his latest intervention and then, worse yet, Johnson couldn’t get the votes to pass his stopgap and get the ping-pong game with Democrats going (many right-wing House members won’t vote for any stopgap spending bill, and others are demanding big domestic spending cuts that don’t pass the smell test). So Johnson is back to square one, as the New York Times reports:
“Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday abruptly canceled a vote on his initial plan to avert a government shutdown, as opposition to the six-month stopgap funding measure piled up in both parties.
“It was a bruising setback for Mr. Johnson coming only a few weeks before a Sept. 30 deadline Congress faces to fund the government or face a shutdown.”
So now what? In the intense heat of an election year in which both the House and the White House are poised between the two parties, the leader of the GOP ticket has ordered Johnson to hold his breath until he turns blue — or more to the point, until the government is shut down — unless something happens that is as likely as Johnson suddenly coming out for abortion rights. Indeed, far from ramming the deeply offensive and impractical SAVE Act down the throats of Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, he can’t even get the stopgap spending measure that includes it out of his own chamber. In the past, Democrats have loaned him a few votes to help him out of a jam, but they won’t do it unless he drops the SAVE Act. And if he drops the SAVE Act, Trump’s friends in the House will happily drop him the first chance they get (maybe right away, or maybe after the election). On the other hand, if he obeys Trump and refuses to move any spending bill, there’s a good chance a few Republicans will defect and back a Democratic measure to avoid an unusually pointless and politically damaging government shutdown. That, too, would expose Johnson as feckless and disposable.
Ever since Johnson succeeded Kevin McCarthy, Washington observers have alternated between treating him as some sort of backwoods parliamentary genius who fools people with his apparent befuddlement and as a Mr. Magoo who stumbles forward blindly and survives by luck and the fact that House Republicans have no better prospects for wielding the gavel. We’ll soon see which Mike Johnson emerges from the current morass. Another major incident of GOP fecklessness and disarray could help Democrats flip the House, but it’s a shame people may not be able to do their jobs in the interim.
Christopher,
Edwards said in 2004 that he would keep arresting sick people in states that allow medical marijuana. He has yet to take a position this round. I can’t vote for those that I love to suffer… otherwise Edwards would be my choice.
Richardson would make a great president, Edwards could learn something about compassion while serving under him.
Sincerely,
Stephen
Edwards for Prez and Richardson for Veep. In my smoke-fogged dreams. Carter is right: first, do no harm. Jail for a joint? No thanks, it costs too much. We could use the money saved to pay for things like, say, hand counted paper ballots, maybe.
But if we don’t make it clear that hand counted paper ballots are the only way to preserve our true democratic rule, or if we are too lazy to count even our own votes, then perhaps we don’t deserve to have our votes included in the count.
The usurpers will repeat with their DREs, and marijauna will remain out of legal reach for the millions of people who could relieve their suffering through the use of some legal pot.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the pot itself or whether anyone gets physical or mental relief through its use. It has to do with the thousands of jobs that are created in the useless, nay harmful, prohibition of the drug.
Lots of people make lots of money simply because marijauna is illegal. That’s what it boils down to.
It is about time a national politician has taken the side of the hurting public. Kudos to Governor Richardson for telling it like it is. People have been suffering needlessly for years and medicalizing marijuana is the educated, civilized, ands proper thing to do. JUST LOOK AT THE ETHNOBOTANICAL HISTORY. Txtracts and tinctures of cannibis have been used as immuno-stimulants and as a wide spectrum antiobiotic used in treating gonorrhea.
Good for Richardson. This is both a problem that needs to be addressed and a political winner. It’s long past time that we re-assess our harsh and unproductive drug laws. Gov. Richardson has helped both himself and millions of suffering Americans. I look forward to seeing him rise in the polls once people realize that Hillary is not what the people or the country needs or wants and Obama is just too unformed as yet.