September 28, 2023
The good news is house lawmakers are working tonight…
This video was taken just a few minutes ago.
Notice they’re voting on some spending bills.
That’s good.
The bad news is none of what the house is working on –will avoid a government shutdown at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday morning.
So what are they doing?
Well, the house voted tonight on four year-long spending bills for the Defense, Agriculture and State Departments and Homeland Security. The problem with that is twofold – in order to avoid a government shutdown, the House and Senate need to pass 12 spending bills. Not four. And the United States Senate has to pass the same bills. But because these four bills are moving forward with only Republican votes and Republican priorities they will never pass the Democrat controlled Senate.
So what is the House doing to actually avoid a government shutdown? Well the House Speaker says tomorrow – Friday – he’s going to put a short term spending bill up for a vote. This bill has provisions in it that house Democrats will never agree to and the fact is – McCarthy doesn’t even have the Republican votes to pass it.
So then what? All McCarthy will say is – “ask me tomorrow.”
At the same time the Senate has been working on its own short terms spending bill to keep the government open until November 17th. That would keep the government open and give lawmakers more time to work out their differences. It is a bipartisan plan and could pass — maybe not in time to avoid a shutdown but it would likely pass shortly after the shutdown happens.
The problem is – at this point, Speaker McCarthy says he’s not interested in that bipartisan bill. He wants the Republican only plan.
It’s a standoff.
Meanwhile the White House is continuing to brace for a shutdown and making preparations across all government departments and agencies. The only silver lining is – if the shutdown happens, it will start on a Sunday which is a day the government is closed anyway. So the real impacts won’t be felt until Monday morning when millions of federal workers would either be furloughed or have to show up to work and not be paid.
