Was the Government Shutdown Crisis Averted?

24 thoughts on “Was the Government Shutdown Crisis Averted?”

1. The Freedom Caucus has tanked the rules votes to bring approps bills to the floor, and Johnson sent them home. My read is the honeymoon is now over.Report

2. I have read in several sources that something went wrong with the GOP’s staffers and they got their priorities reversed on the deal. To wit, the DoD, border security, Agricultural pork etc ended up expiring sooner than the rest of the priorities and this represents a huge fish up because that puts the advantage squarely in the Dems court.

   I’m very puzzled how it happened and if it’s a huge self own. Inexperience? Ineptitude? Did Jeffries pull some sly switcheroo? Of is this just spin?Report

   1. I think (i) they’re just dumbasses and (ii) an underrated factor in the path that got them where they are is how many people had personal grudges against Kevin McCarthy, as opposed to any kind of actual legislative principles and priorities, i.e. there was a lot more concern about sticking it to him as an individual than willingness to, you know, read the legislation.Report

      1. I have heard rumors that more and more laws are being written by lobbyists rather than congresscritters themselves and, if that’s the case, we may be finding ourselves in places where lobbyists don’t really visit the dumber members of the caucus anymore.

         Which means that we now have people who are cribbing doing the whole “law” thing. And while I would be surprised if the congresscritters could even find staffers who are dumber than they are, you have to be at least this not-dumb to crib successfully and it looks like the new-and-improved staffers are not at least that not-dumb.Report

         1. Granted that my experience is getting rather out of date, but chances are good no self-respecting group of coders would tolerate an SCCS as bad as whatever Congress uses for bills.

            My first year working for the Colorado legislature, one of the more senior people asked me why I had caught on so quickly to the way bills and committee reports were written. (This seemed to be a nightmare for most people, and if I knew something that could be added to the training, it would be.) “Look,” I told him, “It’s just diff and patch, done badly by hand by humans, using a horrible syntax.”Report

      2. That tracks with my own priors which is why I’m interrogating them. My problem is I haven’t been able to find confirmation that the base story; the GOP transposed the split CR and basically fished themselves; outside of Maga or left partisan sources.Report

   2. Everyone got what they wanted, right? No shutdown but the people who wanted to be on the record as opposing the deal got to be heard. The can is further down the road but separate bills can be introduced next time. I don’t know if Johnson will survive as Speaker, but whoever is Speaker will face the same problem and he’s more likely than most to push for separate bills, so he’s not in a bad spot.Report

      1. He has pushed separate bills for the last month. Just yesterday the Freedom Caucus tanked the procedural votes on a couple of those bills. His being form that caucus isn’t insulating him from blowback.Report

      2. As far as I’ve been able to tell the Dems got generally what they want. More than they asked for in a round about way. I’m certainly not complaining. Johnson might even get some Dem support if the wingers try and bounce him- who knows?Report

         1. So we’re describing a compromise as having the traits of a compromise. So why the conjecture that something went wrong?Report

            1. Gee, could be the months of the GOP openly REFUSING to compromise with Democrats, much less compromise inside their own house.Report

               1. That’s not true and you know it. We discussed the last compromise at length.Report

                  1. So Kevin McCarthy DIDN’T tell reporters multiple times he didn’t need Democrats to pass a CR? And he wasn’t ousted for putting forward a CR that was devoid of cuts the Freedom Caucus wanted?

                     Fascinating?Report

            2. I’ve seen some crowing in certain partisan left wing sources and some kvetching in certain partisan right wing sources that the GOP’s intended sequence of expirations of the CR have been inverted to the detriment of the GOP’s strategy. But, as these are coming from wingers on both sides, I’m uncertain as to the veracity of those complaints.

               I am not certain this was a coup or a fish up which is why I was soliciting opinions on the matter. Certainly as a Dem I’m pretty chuffed at the outcome. Three more months of budget policy cribbed from the last Dem trifecta is aces in my books.Report

               1. Now *this* I have a problem with. I just looked up “chuffed” and it has two definitions: pleased and displeased. Some compromises are too far!Report

                  1. Sinople is a color. What color, you ask? Red. And Green.Report

                  2. I couldn’t be more (or less) chuffed.Report

                  3. Being half Canadian I stick strictly to the British definition which means pleased.Report

                  4. “Half-Canadian”? Another compromise!Report

                  5. Hah! I think of it more of a having my cake and eating it too scenario. Virtually a cheat code.Report

               2. Here’s a link to the continuing resolution text, as engrossed in the House, including a link to the law the resolution modifies.

                  Status is passed by the House, passed by the Senate, and presented to the President. One amendment was offered in the Senate and rejected. So that’s almost certainly the correct text.

                  As I read it, the group of appropriations that includes Defense goes with the Feb 2 date. I won’t guarantee that; I was flipping back and forth between the two documents and keeping track in my head, not actually assembling the modified statutory text.

                  I suspect a drafting error. Someone lost track of which group of appropriations “…sections 101(1), 101(4), 101(10), 101(12), 134, and 137…” referred to.Report

                  1. Fascinating. Thank you Michael.Report

                  2. The first bucket would fund the departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture and would run through Jan. 19. The second measure would fund the rest of government through Feb. 2.

                     The House has passed seven of the 12 annual appropriations bills that Congress must approve each year. It is considering bills at far lower funding levels than those agreed to in the debt limit deal it struck with President Biden earlier this year and is passing them along party-line votes. The Senate has passed three of the fiscal 2024 bills, lumped into one package, but did so with broad, bipartisan support and in alignment with the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s spending caps.

                     https://www.govexec.com/management/2023/11/congress-averts-shutdown-after-senate-approves-two-tiered-cr/392065/Report

3. Probably nobody got what they wanted, but enough people got something they could accept.Report

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