There was a time when our elected officials, facing a daunting deadline to complete a difficult or unpopular task, would rise to the occasion by saying “failure is not an option”. For a small subset of our current office holders, failure is not only an option, but appears to be a direct objective.
The deadline facing Congress as this column is being written is to fund the federal government prior to the new fiscal year, which begins (or began) October 1st. As the deadline for this piece is just prior to that, it’s not known if Congress somehow produced a procedural miracle and avoided a government shutdown. At the time of writing it appeared that the status quo of a dysfunctional House Republican Caucus and a general lack of agreement of what would/could/should be added to a “clean” continuing resolution were gumming up the works.
Let’s first address the “clean CR” argument, whereby Congress failing to meet a statutory deadline decides to just give itself a new deadline by saying “We’ll just spend the same thing we’re currently spending until we decide to spend something differently”. Despite the lack of agreement within the House GOP caucus that we will address next, it’s been clear for some time that Republicans elected to Congress are expected by their voters to begin to rein in spending.
In the Senate compromise for a CR released Thursday before the weekend deadline, their version of a “Clean CR” added additional funding for Ukraine. This dirties up the CR a bit as it’s both additional spending and a priority that is not universally shared.
While I remain on record as supporting military aid to Ukraine as a vital and necessary check on Russian aggression against our closest allies, the White House has yet to outline to the American People the extent of this aid, clear objectives, or if there are limits.
Most Americans are willing to support aid, but the case needs to be made. Burying the funding in a CR…
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