This month, due to House Republican in-fighting, the US government is on the verge of a shutdown yet again.
It’s clear Congress doesn’t have time to pass the bills it needs to in order to keep the government open before money runs out on September 30. At question is whether the House can pass a short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, that’s acceptable to the House GOP caucus, Senate Democrats, and President Joe Biden in the time that’s left. Doing so would buy lawmakers the time they need to come to an agreement on longer-term funding bills while avoiding a shutdown.
The main hold-up so far is that the Republican conference can’t agree on what should be in the short-term bill: Although the GOP is broadly fiscally conservative, its far-right members are pushing for more aggressive spending cuts, the attachment of border security policies and the omission of Ukraine aid.
The latest development in this impasse has been the emergence of a compromise cobbled together by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team. While some GOP lawmakers opposed to previous CR drafts have said they’d support it, it’s still unclear if enough members would ultimately back it.
McCarthy’s latest proposal is a short-term bill that would keep the government open for 30 days, establish funding levels at $1.471 trillion a year (much lower than the current $1.7 trillion levels), institute a more conservative border policy, and establish a commission to research ways to reduce the national debt. It does not include, however, either disaster aid or Ukraine aid, both of which the White House requested.
The compromise as written is pretty much dead on arrival in the Senate, which wants any CR to include Ukraine and disaster aid, as well as more spending. That means even if it quells House dissent for now, it will do little to avert a shutdown. Since Democrats control the upper chamber, they’ll urge for a “clean” continuing…
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