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.
I know both campaigns are dirty and spin whatever they do- but my intent was not to bash liberals; solely the author, a Democrat. My post was solely to show that her comment was not hypocritical and to show there are multiple sides to this argument. Let us both agree that US politics could use a Change that neither politician elected can truly bring.
“Why do Democrats waste their time trying to get an edge on every single thing that comes out of an opponent’s mouth?”
You have to be kidding? Do you not pay attention to the McCain campaign? They have been the masters at out of context comments, not to mention out of context votes, passed bills, etc… Lipstick on a pig? Whaaa waaa waaa, Disrespectful! Excessive use of powers as a governor? Boo hoo hoo, Sexists!
Even though I’m for state rights neither party seems to support that. Republicans can’t pick and choose which rights they get to choose.
Why do Democrats waste their time trying to get an edge on every single thing that comes out of an opponent’s mouth? This is a perfectly legitimate argument by Palin. I can see there IS an inherent right to privacy. The government has no right spying on what we do with our lives, what we watch, where we get or information from, etc.
HOWEVER, this doesn’t go against the belief that abortion is wrong and should be outlawed. The topic has about 50% of Americans supporting it as a “mother’s choice” and the other 50% are for saving an unborn baby! Murdering would obviously NOT be protected under the Constitution. It is a giant opinion: religion vs. science, property, life & death, etc. It’s a bundle of opinions that cross many boundaries with many pros and cons depending on how you look at it (god forbid you look with a perspective not of a staunch democrat).
Finally, HOW DARE SHE let the PEOPLE of the STATE decide on a LAW! OUTLANDISH… Oh, wait. THAT IS WHAT DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE! Much like the Constitution, this topic is not clear cut: it doesn’t just fall into the privacy clause. I think Palin handled herself quite well: She passed the judgment to the states. The government should allow privacy and butt out of a decision that states should make.
PS. Ed you are Male, if I am (hopefully) correct. You will have no baby so I suggest you let the women deal with this topic because it is far above you.