Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and 16 Republican House members are deliberately creating another government funding crisis. In a more rational world, voters would allow none of them to stay in office.
On Wednesday, 14 House Republicans voted “no” and two voted “present” on a sensible “continuing resolution” bill to keep the government operating through next March while ensuring that only U.S. citizens can vote in this fall’s elections. Their obstinacy, combined with that of all but three Democrats, killed the bill for now and made another stupid government “shutdown” more likely when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
The 16 Republicans voted as they did mainly in protest after Schumer and most Senate Democrats refused to allow a vote on an annual appropriations bill. The House has passed five of the most important appropriations bills — 12 are supposed to pass each year — and would have finished others if the Senate showed any inclination to do its part. Schumer’s dereliction of duty is what makes a continuing resolution rather than the 12 ordinary spending bills in regular order necessary. That dereliction makes a government shutdown at the end of this month a real threat.
The 16 Republicans are mostly the usual suspects more interested in theater than good governance or achievable conservative results. They are Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ) Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Cory Mills (R-FL), Greg Steube (R-FL), Wesley Hunt (R-TX) Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Mike Rogers (R-AL), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT). The two “present” votes, almost equally harmful, came from antisemitic conspiracy theorist Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).
By playing “chicken” with spending bills, with no achievable alternative plan, these Republicans play the part of Schumer’s useful idiots. Whereas a continuing resolution would keep spending within the last budget deal’s mild limits, Schumer wants more spending. He knows he can, as always, blame a shutdown on Republicans who couldn’t even get a majority for their own leadership’s continuing resolution. Blame will be considerable.
Shutdowns cost more money because furloughed workers get back pay even for the time they don’t work. Shutdowns curtail numerous government responsibilities, especially the few “help” services the IRS provides to taxpayers. They also disrupt the economy as service cuts and procurement delays ripple through supply chains.
Now that a short-term funding bill has failed, it is time to move to a longer spending bill.
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A six-month continuing resolution would push the battle over 2025 spending into the next Congress, rather than leaving it in the hands of this year’s infamously ineffective Congress. In January 2025, the Senate is likely to be in Republican hands rather than Schumer’s, and the Biden-Harris-Walz team may have been evicted from the White House.
Why not just stop the drama this fall, keep the government open at less-than-Schumeran spending levels, push voter ID to the forefront, and work for a Republican majority in the next Congress that can govern in a fiscally conservative way?