Ending with a Whimper
The federal government remains closed today. Actually, being closed today was by design, it being the Veterans Day national holiday and all.
But the other six weeks…well, that may actually be ending, too. Enough Democrats voted to debate a new GOP proposal in the U.S. Senate Sunday night to suggest a breakthrough.
Notice, it’s still not an end to the shutdown. It’s just that enough Senators voted—barely enough, the minimum of 60—to proceed to debate on a bill that at that time still had no text, and was just a framework. So there’s plenty to go wrong between now and Congress returning tomorrow.
Essentially, the current proposal funds the government at Biden-era budget levels through January…and funds a limited number of programs through the fiscal year, next September 30. That includes fully funding Congress; that joke writes itself. But it includes funding the agriculture department, and SNAP, through next September. That’s not a farm bill; who knows if they’ve even remembered they’re more than two years behind on that.
The deal also guarantees back pay for those affected by the shutdown, and anyone laid off during the shutdown will be rehired. All that is lots of business-as-usual.
The thing that broke the ice was a promise by the Senate Majority Leader to allow the Democrats to bring a bill to the Senate floor on health care. That’s it…just a promise to have a vote in December. That was a promise with enough specificity to allow a total of eight Democrats to vote with virtually all Republicans. If you’re wondering, Kentucky’s Rand Paul is the lone Republican against the plan.
Predictably, those on the far left howled at the deal. Those on the right praised it. But they used the same language, although with very different meanings: “Forty days, and this is all Democrats got out of it?”
Assuming the Senate officially votes to pass the plan—which only takes a simple majority—it then goes to the House, where no outcome is ever certain.
Can the professional politicians in Washington on both sides get out of their own way long enough to pass this latest kick-the-can-down-the-road plan? I’m sure not betting on it.
