The House of Representatives and its GOP leadership seems to be floundering in its efforts to avoid a shutdown while placating its own members. The new speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a plan yesterday that seems needlessly convoluted.
Unlike ordinary continuing resolutions that fund federal agencies for a specific period, the measure announced by Johnson would fund some parts of the government until 19 January and others until 2 February. House Republicans hope to pass the measure Tuesday.
…The Louisiana Republican appeared to be appealing to two warring House Republican factions: hardliners who wanted legislation with multiple end-dates; and centrists who had called for a “clean” stopgap measure free of spending cuts and conservative policy riders that Democrats reject.
The legislation would extend funding for military construction, veterans benefits, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and energy and water programs through 19 January. Funding for all other federal operations would expire on 2 February.
…The House Republican stopgap contained no supplemental funding such as aid for Israel or Ukraine.
Even if this passes the house with purely GOP support, an iffy proposition at best since some have already said that they oppose it, its chances in the senate are small. Even if it passes there, the White House has thrown cold water on it.
So Johnson and the GOP will continue to waste time as the Friday deadline approaches.
Mike Johnson’s goal is not to avoid a shutdown. His only goal is to keep his job for as long as he can. Enough of his party would prefer a shutdown, so he can’t keep them happy and allow government to work. He is in the group that believes that good government is bad government and bad government is good government. Making the government work badly is not a problem for them. Good government is their enemy.
Yeah, it’s almost as if they’re not really trying…
The next one will be notes on a napkin.
The Republicans and the tories have reached the absolute bottom at the same time.
Nothing is about “government” or “responsibility” and more. But they will keep using those words as sound bytes. From now on, no serious journalist should accept a Republican answer containing those words.
Bold of you to assume they’re not going to keep getting worse.
Dunc @ 5
Yes, but when they start with -I dunno- cannibalism or slave trading we have gone beyond “bad” and need new nomenclature.
We know the Chinese have a “pragmatic” attitude to organ harvesting, that might be the next big thing they want to import in the name of market forces.
-If you have read William Gibson lately, you may be familiar with the possible future “Jackpot” of disaster capitalism. Losing a big chunk of the world population (and a bigger chunk of the biosphere and its ecosystem services) would not deter or even slow down these professional parasites.