Dem
48
Ties
1
GOP
51
The calendar has turned to September. Soon, the school year will start (for those who haven't already headed back to the classroom). The NFL regular season commences this week. The official start of fall is a few weeks away. And, as is always the case these days, it's time for Congress to start squabbling over the budget.
Under normal circumstances, the members of Congress would be scared witless of shutting the government down in the middle of a presidential election season, and so would find a way to work something out, even if that just means kicking the can down the road into January or February of next year. But what we have right now aren't normal circumstances.
To start with, the budget hawks in Congress feel like they've had their lunch handed to them in the last several rounds of budget talks. And some of them are saying, with apologies to Twisted Sister, "We're not gonna take it anymore." Some of these folks not only believe in fiscal austerity, they ran on the issue, and they don't particularly want to run for reelection having accomplished nothing on this front. And it's not just members in ruby-red districts necessarily. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), to take one example, is a well-known budget hawk.
Another problem is that the Republican Conference, particularly in the House, has a number of members who would see a government shutdown as a feature, not a bug. They would be thrilled to go back home and say "We all know that government is bad, and so I've done the best possible thing—brought it to its knees." These folks don't much care about the consequences to the country or to their fellow Republicans.
A third issue is that a fair number of Republicans—the really Trumpy ones—want the SAVE Act inserted into any spending bill before they'll vote for passage. The SAVE Act declares that it is forbidden for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. Since that is the situation whether or not the "legislation" passes, the bill wouldn't actually change anything. What it would do, however, is allow Republicans to say that undocumented immigrants are voting in huge numbers, and that it's such a huge problem that even the Democrats in Congress agreed something had to be done about it.
Further, even if there is agreement on the general notion of kicking the can, the question of how far into the future to kick it could be contentious. Broadly speaking, Democrats would be happy to kick it far into next year. That way, regardless of what happens in the presidential election, the government would be funded under the auspices of a Democratic president's budget throughout that time. The Republicans believe, of course, that they might well recapture the Senate and/or the White House, putting them in a stronger position. So, they will prefer a pretty short can kick, as opposed to a long one.
And if all of this isn't hairy enough, the fiscal year ends at the end of this month, and Congress won't even be back in session until next Monday. So, they will basically have 15 working days to come up with something, or else shut down all or part of the government.
As you can see, the great majority of the issues above involve disputes within the GOP Conference. So, it will largely be up to the Republican leadership to figure something out. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has unexpectedly become the voice of reason in the last couple of years, is trying mightily to rein his conference in. In particular, he doesn't want to touch the SAVE Act with a 10-foot pole. As to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the last time there was a budget to be worked out, he suddenly went from being a hard-right bomb thrower to being a centrist dealmaker. Will he pull the chameleon act again? We'll find out in a week or two. (Z)