Timestamp: Early Sunday morning
On Friday morning I received an email from freshman Democratic Representative Jeff Jackson. (While I live in his state I don’t live in his district. I’m sure part of the reason he emailed me is because he wants my endorsement and vote in his upcoming run for North Carolina Attorney General. In time he will most likely be pleased on both counts. You see the North Carolina Republicans redistricted him out of his seat in Congress. Funny how that happens. No, it isn’t!) The title of the email was “Seven days until shutdown“. The timestamp is necessary but in reality, nothing of substance has transpired between that email and this writing. I’m betting not much else of substance will between now and publishing.
The crux of the problem is that the government runs out of money at the end of the day on the 17th. Having already squandered all but seven of the 45 days they gave themselves with the last continuing resolution (CR) what did the new House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson do? Did he schedule all night emergency sessions of the House? No. Did he at least keep the House in session over the weekend? No, he sent them home for the weekend. Why would you work on weekends when you were already past the point of success after your first “second chance” and “the store” is about to be shuttered?
The only “development” appears to be some sort of two-step CR that appears to be DOA in the Senate and the White House is not exactly jumping for joy over it either. Here is my bottom line on it: it looks like a trap.
Under Johnson’s “leadership” the House was set to put two separate funding bills on the floor last week only to pull them at the last minute when they realized they lacked the votes to pass them. I guess I should consider it progress that this regime, unlike some of its recent Republican predecessors, appears to be able to count votes. Sorry, that bar is even too low for a Republican basher like me!
The House did manage to censure a Democrat and pass DOA resolutions lowering the pay of some other Democrats they don’t like. Truth be told even one of those resolutions failed; perhaps they are not that talented at counting votes after all.
There is no way we will have a budget by this Friday. Congress is usually good at coming up with some sort of kick the can deal at the eleventh hour, so maybe the lights will stay on come this weekend. Then again maybe not.
To view this in baseball terms, thus far on important votes Johnson is worse than 0 for 2. He didn’t just strike out; he failed to get in the batter’s box.
I hope the voters are paying attention and we get the people who are set on the destruction of America off the payroll for next year. Remember every seat in the House (which is currently the biggest problem in Washington) is on the November 2024 ballot. All we can do in the interim is hope we make it that far.
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