Budget Trainwreck Approaching Fast
Once again, it appears Congress is not going to do its constitutional job on time. October will dawn without a federal budget in place for the next fiscal year, unless (by some miracle) everything gets done in the next two weeks. This miracle is not likely to happen -- it's on the order of wishing for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden to announce tomorrow that they're not running for president next year. It's just not going to happen, in other words.
The Senate hasn't passed a single appropriations bill yet, but they've at least gotten all of them out of committee, with impressive bipartisan support. However, due to the Byzantine rules for getting floor votes to happen, there's no guarantee all of them will pass before the end-of-the-month due date. Some of them will likely pass, but at this point it looks like it would take a somewhat-lesser miracle for all of them to clear the chamber on time.
Since Republicans are in control on the other side of the Capitol, the House of Representatives is in complete disarray. Kevin McCarthy, the weakest politician to hold the speaker's chair in quite some time, is struggling to get all the members of his caucus on the same page. Since this includes factions who do not have any grasp on reality to speak of, this is going to be quite the task for him. The craziest of these crazies are already threatening to try to depose McCarthy as speaker if they don't get all of their demands in the budget fight. They will not get all of their demands, however, because other (much saner) Republicans do not agree with the goals of the crazies. So the House isn't going to get all of their appropriations bills complete by the deadline either.
Even if both houses did somehow manage to get all of this done in a reasonable timeframe, that still wouldn't be the end of the fight. The Senate, as noted, has passed bipartisan budget bills that will likely pass the full Senate, since Republicans were consulted and allowed input to the various spending bills. The Democrats are in control, of course, which means that the bills reflect mostly Democratic principles, with some concessions for Republicans that are not "deal-breakers" or "poison pills" for the Democrats.
If all the Senate bills do eventually pass, any or all of them would likely be able to pass the House, with mostly Democratic votes and the moderate (read: sane) Republicans who hail from swing districts also supporting them. But this isn't going to happen, or at least not any time soon.
The House is passing purely red-meat conservative bills. They did not seek any input from Democrats, and are trying to make a partisan stand. They can't even manage to get this together due to the lack of consensus within their own caucus, and even if they do manage to get this done somehow, all of their partisan bills will then be dead in the water over in the Senate (because they contain nothing but poison pills for Democrats). It is an exercise in futility, plain and simple, but one that the crazy factions have long demanded, so McCarthy's got to go through the motions of trying to appease them.
At some point, there will have to be negotiations between the Democratic and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the White House. Compromises will need to be hashed out in these meetings, but only provisions which Senate Democrats and Joe Biden can accept will be agreed to (meaning almost all of the red meat McCarthy is haggling over with his caucus is going to wind up on the cutting room floor). At some point a deal will emerge and pass both chambers with bipartisan support and Biden will sign the new budget into law.
Getting from here to there is going to be a bumpy ride, though. The real battle in the next two weeks is not going to be the sideshow of Republicans trashing Republicans on the House floor, but rather whatever "continuing resolution" can be hammered together. This will put the federal budget on autopilot and kick the due date down the road for what is likely to be a few months, to allow for the serious and final negotiations to take place.
The real question is going to be whether even a continuing resolution will be able to pass on time or not. The Senate will likely do so before the deadline, but it is not guaranteed that it will make it through the House. Late today news broke that McCarthy has managed to unite his factions (somewhat) on their own version of a continuing resolution -- one that includes a lot of the conservative red-meat provisions. This could squeak through a floor vote with only Republican votes, but it will be dead on arrival over in the Senate. The Senate will pass a more traditional version, which will essentially continue the budget from last year for the next few months, with a few things (such as domestic disaster aid and perhaps military aid to Ukraine) added in.
The real showdown is going to happen then. If both houses have passed a continuing resolution then they will both sit back and demand that the other house pass their version. If this standoff goes on past the end of the month, the federal government will shut down. Both sides will try to point the finger of blame at the other side, but if history is any guide, it is the House Republicans who will wind up bearing much of the public's blame for the situation. At this point, a shutdown looks like the most likely outcome, in fact, since McCarthy knows that if he does bring the bipartisan Senate bill to the House floor it will likely result in an immediate attempt to depose him from the speaker's chair (which McCarthy is reportedly profanely daring the hotheads to attempt: "If you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the fucking motion"). Even if the bill passes the House with bipartisan support (or perhaps "especially if the bill passes"), McCarthy will be in trouble with the hotheaded faction of his party.
To depose a speaker requires a majority vote. Most of the Republican caucus -- say, around 180 of them at a seat-of-the-pants guess, but this number could easily be higher -- will vote to support McCarthy. So the entire question will fall to the Democrats. If all the Democrats (or most of them) vote with the GOP hotheads to oust McCarthy, then he will be forced out. But where will that leave us all?
The House will grind to an immediate halt if there is no sitting speaker. Remember January? The endless votes? That's where we'll be again. Except this time, there will be no obvious successor to McCarthy on the Republican side. None of the hotheads has anywhere near enough support with the Republicans to get a majority vote. If McCarthy can't manage this either, then they will be left leaderless and rudderless, aimlessly drifting. The Democrats will, of course, all vote for their own leader, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, but they don't have enough votes to form a majority. It would take a handful of defections from Republicans to elect Jeffries, and I for one don't see any Republicans being willing to vote into power a member of the opposition. Even for the moderates, that seems like a bridge too far.
The House will be locked into this leadership battle until some sort of answer is found, but there just is no obvious answer to the conundrum. Which is why it is doubtful that the Democrats would throw this monkey wrench in the first place. Remember that without their votes (almost all of them), McCarthy will survive the leadership challenge. In the "motion to vacate" vote, McCarthy doesn't have to get a majority voting for him (as he did to become speaker in January), instead the people who want to depose him have to get a majority behind them. It's a subtle point, but it may save his speakership. In fact, it may save his speakership over and over again, as the hotheads could easily call for a vacate-the-chair vote each and every morning (as indeed one of them has already threatened to do this week). So this circus could go on for a while, even if McCarthy keeps his seat.
All any of this is going to prove is that it is indeed the House Republicans who should be blamed for the trainwreck of a shutdown (if one happens). They'll be demonstrating to America how ineffectual they are when put in charge, and how they cannot manage to get anything done on their own. The old joke about Republicans will be proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt: "Government doesn't work -- elect us and we'll prove it!"
We haven't yet entered the end game of all of this Kabuki theater. Congress still has two weeks left before a government shutdown looms. But at this juncture, the signs don't look good. Sooner or later we will reach a compromise and a budget for next year will be signed into law by President Biden. But we've got a long and bumpy road to travel before we get to that point.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
The full faith and credit of the United States is on the line and has been sitting there rather precariously for a very, very long time.
Even if a deal is reached in time, as always, that would be another strike against the US from the perspective of the outside world.
If a deal isn't reached and the US government goes into default - even if it only lasts a day or less - then all bets are off and who knows what will happen to how the US is seen by the rest of the world.
One thing that even a fleeting default would come close to guaranteeing ... Biden's dream of a new world order swinging ever closer to the nightmare of new world chaos.
Elizabeth this is about government shutting down and not a debt ceiling default — get your Republican fiasco du jour straight!
Elizabeth Miller
1
The full faith and credit of the United States is on the line and has been sitting there rather precariously for a very, very long time.
The current credit rating of the United States is either AA+ or AAA as determined by the Big Three: S&P, Fitch, and Moody's. AAA is as good as it gets, and AA+ is a tiny notch below; as such, your characterization of America's credit is wildly incorrect and patently false and wildly incorrect.
Even if a deal is reached in time, as always, that would be another strike against the US from the perspective of the outside world.
So you're now speaking for the "outside world" and their "perspective" too? That's really rich since the vast majority of the "outside world" has a lower rating than the United States and would "kill" (figure of speech... for most of them, anyway) for an AAA or even an AA+ rating; there are literally hundreds and hundreds of countries with a lower rating.
If a deal isn't reached and the US government goes into default - even if it only lasts a day or less - then all bets are off and who knows what will happen to how the US is seen by the rest of the world.
You were the one who literally just claimed to know the "perspective of the outside world." Also, you are confusing the payment of the debt with passing of the federal budget... two wholly different things.
One thing that even a fleeting default would come close to guaranteeing ... Biden's dream of a new world order swinging ever closer to the nightmare of new world chaos.
New world chaos!? Fleeting default!? O. M. G. Reminds me of Ron Dee Santis claiming he will "start slitting throats" if elected president... totally unnecessarily overdramatic. :)
MtnCaddy
2
Elizabeth this is about government shutting down and not a debt ceiling default — get your Republican fiasco du jour straight!
Exactly!
Maybe we should brace ourselves for "fleeting default" and "new world chaos"... just kidding.
The United States has never not paid our debts and can definitely continue to do so while working on next year's budget. :)
Kick,
Insular Americans wouldn't know this but there is a new world order trying to take shape and it ain't being directed by Biden.
Kick and Caddy,
Yes, I have conflated default with government shutdown. My bad. There are so many American ills these days that it can be hard to keep them all straight. Heh.
The point remains, however, that every single time the US demonstrates poor governance is a strike against Biden's effort to maintain the rules-based world order he still dreams about managing.
Kick,
United States has never not paid our debts and can definitely continue to do so while working on next year's budget. :)
Coming close to not paying its debts, over and over again, especially given the current political climate in the US, is harmful enough. ;)
Kick [3]
For whatever it's worth, those same "Big Three" credit raters were the very same guys who said the sub-prime mortgage bonds were all also "AAA".
Heh.
Elizabeth Miller wrote:
5
Insular Americans wouldn't know this but there is a new world order trying to take shape and it ain't being directed by Biden.
With Fox News, the Falun Gong, and multiple right-wingnut sources prattling on and on incessantly about the "new world order" on a regular basis, it ain't exactly a revelation or even remotely some "new news."
Elizabeth Miller
6
Yes, I have conflated default with government shutdown. My bad.
Yes, you did.
There are so many American ills these days that it can be hard to keep them all straight.
Or maybe your mind simply isn't capable of keeping them "straight." It would be a much better use of your human spewage if you pissed all over Canada and took care of your own fires (literally) instead of blowing smoke all over US.
The point remains, however, that every single time the US demonstrates poor governance is a strike against Biden's effort to maintain the rules-based world order he still dreams about managing.
You sound like a right-wingnut echo chamber.
Elizabeth Miller
7
Coming close to not paying its debts, over and over again, especially given the current political climate in the US, is harmful enough.
You are conflating the asinine exercise of raising of the debt ceiling with not paying the debt.
C. R. Stucki
8
For whatever it's worth, those same "Big Three" credit raters were the very same guys who said the sub-prime mortgage bonds were all also "AAA".
It's worth nothing, Stucki, since I would wager you are well aware that you're making one hell of a false equivalency and you more probably than not are aware that not all of the sub-prime mortgage bonds were rated AAA, necessitating the investment banks to pay some handsome fees to the Big Three in order to obtain those AAA ratings to sell those structured products to investors. As you are likely also well aware, those with ratings lower than AAA were then bundled by the investment banks and sold as CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and (even worse) synthetic CDOs.
And who paid billions to bail out that mess? You well know.
Elizabeth,
What’s this “new world order that’s trying to take shape”?
Let’s recap: after WWII the United States offered the world a deal. We would guarantee freedom of the seas to all nations in exchange for the US writing the West’s security policies to counter the Communists. This was the start of globalism and the Asian miracles, for example, couldn’t have happened without this arrangement.
But the Soviets went belly up in 1991 and China is no longer Communist and American Presidents of late are less and less interested in policing the worlds oceans. Both Russia and China are terminally short of young people and are likely to collapse in a decade or two.
Here in North America, we DO have enough young people and we’re reshoring our supply chains. We’ll be fine.
But please do elaborate.
Kick,
With Fox News, the Falun Gong, and multiple right-wingnut sources prattling on and on incessantly about the "new world order" on a regular basis, it ain't exactly a revelation or even remotely some "new news."
Start focusing on more reliable sources of information! :)
Kick,
Or maybe your mind simply isn't capable of keeping them "straight." It would be a much better use of your human spewage if you pissed all over Canada and took care of your own fires (literally) instead of blowing smoke all over US.
...letting your own words speak for themselves. Ahem.
Elizabeth Miller
15
Start focusing on more reliable sources of information!
I see you received my message loud and clear, and it really would behoove you greatly to act on it because your words resemble those of a raving right-wingnut loon. :)
Elizabeth Miller
16
...letting your own words speak for themselves. Ahem.
My "own words" don't (never did and never will) need you to let them speak for themselves; however, said words were definitely meant especially for you. I imagine it isn't entirely impossible that the more often you avail yourself of the cutting and pasting and repetition of my "own words," you might surprise us all and actually learn something.
So, to recap: My "own words" already "speak for themselves" without needing anyone "letting" them; however, please repeat my "own words" and allow them to speak to you at every chance you get. You quite obviously had need of them. :)
Sigh.
Caddy (and Kick, too),
What's this “new world order that’s trying to take shape”?
Keep an eye on the upcoming annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York City but the meeting of the G77 + China meeting happening now in Havana will shed more light on the subject.
Global South leaders demand end to "plundering international order"
Caddy,
Here's another interesting piece ...
Can BRICS end apartheid against the Global South?