House Passes 45-Day Continuing Resolution
It appears a shutdown has been averted after all.
A failed gambit last night made a government shutdown at midnight look all but certain. But Speaker Kevin McCarthy has just agreed to a deal, with near-unanimous Democratic support, that may keep the lights on after all.
WaPo (“House passes short-term funding bill with hours until government shutdown“):
Just hours before a potential government shutdown, Republicans and Democrats reached a deal in the House that includes a 45-day continuing resolution with disaster relief funds, an extension of a federal flood insurance program and FAA reauthorization — but no Ukraine aid.
It was not immediately clear where things stood in the Senate, where a procedural vote on the chamber’s stopgap measure had yet to be called. The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Sunday if a deal is not reached.
The Post is essentially live-blogging it but it looks like a deal is getting done, against all odds.
Jeff Stein:
A White House official signaled administration support for the House bill, highlighting that the legislation averts deep cuts to domestic programs and includes disaster relief. The official also said the administration expects House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to soon bring another bill to the floor to support Ukraine. The official provided the statement on the condition of anonymity to describe a position not yet made public.
Leigh Ann Caldwell:
Democrats are “very happy no border toxins” were included in the House’s recently passed bill, according to a member in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had publicly made that a central demand, and if it were included, it could have pushed Democrats to vote on policies they don’t support. Democratic leadership was surprised it wasn’t in his request.
This may well cost McCarthy his Speakership. But it averts the catastrophe of a shutdown.
I am so grateful to the Republican controlled United States House of Representatives that we don’t have to go through this again for another 45 days!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Qevin will be much better off not being speaker. His blood pressure will go down, he’ll sleep better at night, he won’t be spending all day sucking up to the vaping theater groper, the ephibophile, and MTG. He’ll be sad for a while, but better off long term.
Here’s what I’m wondering: why was “no aid to Ukraine” the only thing Kevvie-boy was willing to fight for?
I predict this will strengthen McCarthy and he will remain speaker. Not because of any great positives on his part but because all Republicans except the nutjobs recognize the alternative is worse.
@SenyorDave:
I think that assumes the Dems will continue to save his bacon. He’s too stupid not to screw that up. Plus while the amount of intense GOP whack jobs is pretty small, at least half of the GOP reps will lose their fucking minds if they have to vote with Dems constantly. They might go for that once or twice if they know they’ll get rolled otherwise l, but by the third time they’ll be leading the motion to vacate.
@MarkedMan:
Because it seems to have become a touchstone of MAGA-loyalty among the terminally online sections of the Republican base, who are among the most vociferously active of the activists.
Also with a significant number of the clique of new-Right tech-bro mega donors, who seem to have a serious case of oligarch envy.
Plus in some cases a really weird misunderstanding of the ideology and political sociology of Russia.
And Hungary, for that matter.
Again, in Camp Trump, where Ukraine is hated with a passion for its refusal to go along with their plans to libel Biden re. Burisma etc.
In the immortal words of Logan Roy:
“You are not serious people.”
@Beth:
The way this should play out is that McCarthy has finally called the MAGAts’ bluff. If they try to get rid of him now, he will be forced into an explicit power sharing arrangement with the Dems in order to survive (explicit because he can’t be trusted to keep his word), and then the loony brigade would have to go back to their patrons and their voters and explain why they just handed all kinds of power to the DEMONRATS!!!!
I say “this is the way it should play out” because who the hell knows with these nihilistic lunatics with IQs somewhere in the range of high school basketball scores?
@JohnSF:
I think this is the critical piece. I doubt most of these MAGAt Reps even understand what is happening on their own. I’m sure most couldn’t find Ukraine on the map or even explain why there is a war going on. They’ve taken this position because they’ve been told to by their patrons and it’s reinforced by their semi-psychotic voters who in turn have been rallied to the pro-Russian cause by a concerted effort. The Tech bros certainly have opinions, but it’s not clear why they have those opinions or who they got them from. Similar for the active campaign to recruit the aptly named Red States over to Putin’s war effort.
@MarkedMan: We had Nazi-sympathizers in the 1930s and 40s, and we have Putin-fluffers now. And it’s the same demos, for the same reasons: they’re fascistic, antisemitic, amoral, and not very smart.
@MarkedMan:
Isn’t it?
We know that there was a Russian operation to get influence over the NRA. Mariya Butina, now a member of the Russian parliament, was the key contact.
She was also in a relationship with the Overstock.com CEO, Patrick Byrne. Byrne is also known as one of the crazies giving Trump advice on overturning the 2020 election.
If the Overstock.com guy was a target of a Russian operation, I think it’s pretty clear that a lot of the other TechBros were too. You don’t start and end with Overstock.com. We don’t know the details, and we don’t know whether TechBro A is a literal asset or if he has just spent too much time hanging out with TechBros B and C who are assets (for individualist iconoclasts, they are surprisingly similar in their opinions), but it’s very clear what is happening on a larger scale.
Anyway, this CR is a great triumph for Vladimir Putin. Just as the groundless investigations into Biden having a son who was in Ukraine grifting on the family name as a great triumph — just stain everything that touches Ukraine in any way with mounds of bullshit until people don’t want to touch it.
——
ETA: are you a conspiracy theorist if the parts of the conspiracy are right there, sitting in the open? I don’t think Putin controls the Republicans, but many Republicans certainly bend in his direction and we can see likely avenues of influence.
You know, I feel that there’s a possibility that in fact McCarthy (who supports Ukraine to my knowledge) has outmaneuvered the crazies. If no aid to Ukraine was their line in the sand, instead of crazy border things, that is easy to do now, and then undo later. As has been said elsewhere, there’s stuff already in the pipeline, and broad bipartisan support for Ukraine in both houses. So this is not the final word. But it makes them feel like they accomplished something.
@Gustopher:
I believe I said from Day One that Trump was a Russian stooge. Russian media talks openly about it. And Trump’s cult is all in for Russia because Trump is not really hiding the fact that he’s a Putin supporter. I suspect there really is a piss tape or something equally hard to explain even to MAGAts.
We should ask @Kathy if Trump’s plane can get to Russian soil in a single hop.
@Michael Reynolds:
If he left from NYC he could make it to Moscow with a stop in London, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon. Or he could get from LA to Alaska, and from there not to Moscow, but to Russian Siberia, then to Moscow.
He’d need one of his rich suckers to loan or gift him a smaller jet, like Bombardier Global 7500 or 8000.
Hell, if the Cheeto promises to stay in Moscow the rest of his life, I’ll hire a jet to get him there myself. I figure the Gofund me campaign would yield a hundred times as much as hiring a Global 8000 for one trip would cost me.
@Kathy:
I’d pay for the jet myself. (I’m sure my bank manager would be understanding 😉 )
But, I ran out of money to pay for fuel about half way over the Arctic Ocean!
Oopsie!
@JohnSF:
Damn. That’s an even better idea!
Let me know when you set a GoFundMe page for that.
Kevin McCarthy comes from a deep red rural congressional district. He has primary voters to face if he wants to be renominated to remain in Congress.
John Boehner and Paul Ryan found out they could not control their caucus and then got out.
@Kathy:
We could call the campaign “Rocket to Russia” in honor of The Ramones.
@just nutha:
Vainglorious ephibiphile.
Gaetz is a narcissist. All eyes on me.
Clean up on Aisle 666, clean up on Aisle 666.
Of course Kevin was willing to sell out the Ukraine and appease Russia to temporarily save his Speakership. I suppose Democrats are a betting that they can ‘fix’ this dangerous Republican Chamberlainian idiocy later.
@MarkedMan: “Here’s what I’m wondering: why was “no aid to Ukraine” the only thing Kevvie-boy was willing to fight for?”
rhymes with ‘Mutin’.
@SenyorDave: I think this is correct – he has shown to his serious party compatriots that the Radical sub-faction of the MAGA faction basically are unserious, untrustworthy on any rational basis, and most importantly ready to damage their own party ccolleagues to play Reality TV games.
By bending over backward and still having them engage in No-vote shenanigans (what we call chez moi the Beni Non-Non), and right to last minute, he’s removed plausible deniability for ‘oh if we just did X they would get on board.’ This probably deeply undercuts their (the radical maga fringe) ability to gain any traction and influence.
(it seems equally that as McCarthy is not anti Ukraine that the mentioned manouevre gave a plausible divide-and-conquer on the vote on his own party side, and then Ukraine can be added into some funding later outside of the crisis moment)
@Lounsbury: House Dem leadership has issued a statement saying they expect the Speaker to bring a stand-alone Ukraine assistance bill to the floor w/o the odd super-majority requirement that was attached to the CR. That suggests McCarthy may have learned the basic Speaker skill of counting votes.
It’s worth reminding people that, back when we actually had governance, a 45-day continuing resolution would have been seen as a grotesque failure. What happens under a CR is not “normal operations” and has serious impacts. Limited or no hiring; limited or no travel; no new projects, no matter how “shovel-ready”. Even where ongoing activities continue and funds are ostensibly available, agencies are unwilling to spend more than minimum sustaining amounts until they know for sure how much they are going to get for the year.
Remember what it was like at school when there was a substitute teacher? That’s sort of what government is like under a CR.
@DrDaveT: Maybe a new rule should be: No August breaks until appropriations bills are passed. It is not as if they don’t have air conditioning these days.
@Scott:
Several people, including my Representative in the House, have introduced bills to prevent future shutdowns by automatically kicking in prefab CR provisions if the deadline is reached with no budget. The better versions of these proposed laws are both effective at keeping the government operating and sufficiently painful to Congress that they won’t be seen as an excuse for brinksmanship.
@DrDaveT:..substitute teacher…
When I was in High School (class of 1966) we had at least one of them in tears before all was said and done. She never came back.
Too bad we can’t get the same reaction out of Gaetz and company.
@Mister Bluster: You’ve got that backwards Gaetz and Co. are the students, not the sub. @DrDaveT: Students are always overjoyed to see me. It means they have the day off.