government shutdown

Government shutdown looms at midnight on Friday – the GOP owns it

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A quick glance at the calendar says today is Wednesday, December 6, and we are headed for a government shutdown at midnight on Friday, December 8 — yet there doesn’t seem to be any sense  of urgency to keep the government open from Tea-Publicans in Washington, D.C.

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 63 percent of voters want Congress to take any necessary measures to avoid a shutdown. Majority in new poll wants shutdown avoided at all costs.

Too bad, America. Our Twitter-troll-in-chief last week, once again, suggested that he wants to shut down the government, the only American president who has ever openly advocated for a government shutdown because to do so is a failure to execute the duties of the office of the presidency. Trump tells confidants that a government shutdown might be good for him:

President Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically and is focusing on his hard-line immigration stance as a way to win back supporters unhappy with his outreach to Democrats this fall, according to people who have spoken with him recently.

Over the past 10 days, the president has also told advisers that it is important that he is seen as tough on immigration and getting money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two people who have spoken with him. He has asked friends about how a shutdown would affect him politically and has told several people he would put the blame on Democrats.

But of course he would. Donald Trump blames everyone else for his failures. The man has never accepted responsibility for anything he has done in his entire life.

The GOP congressional leadership is currently trying to negotiate a two week stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Friday. But they can’t seem to come to an agreement amongst themselves because of a revolt from the radical House GOP Freedom Caucus. House conservatives returned to their old ways this week: Playing havoc with spending legislation:

[The calm] came to an abrupt end Monday night, when members of the Freedom Caucus tried to grind progress on tax legislation to a halt.

These hard-right conservatives had no quarrel with the tax plan — they almost all voted for it — but they were looking for a hostage to grab and knew that this one would get everyone’s attention.

Their real target is the 2018 spending bill for federal agencies, along with a clutch of other must-pass items that conservatives oppose.

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The battle lines are drawn: a government shutdown over DACA appears likely

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Back in September before the last threatened government shutdown, Donald Trump surprisingly worked out a deal with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to keep the government open and raised expectations that a deal could be struck on DACA and the DREAMers. I warned you at the time, A DACA deal with ‘Amnesty Don’? Don’t believe it until it actually happens.

The Trump administration had rescinded DACA in early September, giving Congress a March 5 deadline to pass a bill allowing its nearly 690,000 beneficiaries to stay and work in the United States.

It was not long afterwards that Trump reneged on his deal for DACA and the DREAMers. Deal making with the devil on DACA. I warned you.

The next deadline for a government shutdown is Friday, December 8. Democrats have vowed to withhold votes from the spending bill should it not address DACA and the DREAMers. Government shutdown looms in December over DACA.

A government shutdown now appears more likely after the antics of our Twitter-troll-in-chief today. “President Trump on Tuesday cast doubt on Washington’s ability to avoid a government shutdown, writing on Twitter that he didn’t believe a deal could be reached with Democrats.” Trump: ‘I don’t see a deal’ to avoid government shutdown:

The tweet came hours before Trump was to meet at the White House with GOP congressional leaders as well as Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

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Ah, now there’s the “@realDonaldTrump” we all know and despise, the xenophobic, anti-immigrant white nationalist racist who takes his cues from his alt-right white nationalist advisers, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, who are willing to take the DREAMers hostage in order to extort funding from Congress for Trump’s “big beautiful wall” along the Mexican border that even the GOP leadership in Congress does not want and has not provided funding.

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Deal making with the devil on DACA

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Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith

* * *

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

Sympathy For The Devil – The Rolling Stones

I warned you about making deals with the devil. A DACA deal with ‘Amnesty Don’? Don’t believe it until it actually happens. One cannot trust anything that a pathological liar says. President Trump has made 1,318 false or misleading claims over 263 days.

This week the Trump administration announced its hostage demands for a DACA deal. Trump administration releases hard-line immigration principles, threatening deal on ‘dreamers’:

The Trump administration released a list of hard-line immigration principles late Sunday that threaten to derail a deal in Congress to allow hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally.

The administration’s wish list includes the funding of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a crackdown on the influx of Central American minors and curbs on federal grants to “sanctuary cities,” according to a document distributed to Congress and obtained by The Washington Post.

The demands were quickly denounced by Democratic leaders in Congress who had hoped to forge a deal with President Trump to protect younger immigrants, known as “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

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12 days in September: a potential disaster-in-the-making

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Congress has scheduled only 12 working days in September. The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman recently laid out the disaster-in-the-making that the month of September may bring. Republicans are heading for a hellish month. Trump will only make it worse.

Republicans are facing an extraordinary period on Capitol Hill, one which will require work, skill, care and luck to navigate successfully.

Even in the best of circumstances, it would be an incredibly difficult challenge. But it will be made even harder by the fact that the person who should be their greatest asset — the president — is in fact their greatest impediment.

Here’s a quick list of what Republicans are facing over the next six weeks:

  • If Congress doesn’t pass a budget bill by the end of September, the government will shut down.
  • If Congress doesn’t pass an increase in the debt ceiling by the end of September, the United States will default on its debts, potentially triggering a global financial crisis.
  • The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which insures about 9 million children, needs to be reauthorized by the end of September.
  • The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) needs to be reauthorized by the end of September.
  • Republicans want to pass sweeping tax reform as soon as possible.
  • The White House still wants to pass an infrastructure bill.
  • Many Republicans in Congress still want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and conservatives in the House are attempting to force a vote on full repeal, reigniting the debate that was so disastrous for them.

How is President Trump confronting this set of challenges?

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Raising the federal debt ceiling: the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time

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The recurring obligation to raise the federal debt ceiling was scheduled to coincide with the end of the current fiscal year on September 30 to give GOP hostage takers some leverage with passing next year’s budget.

It does not appear remotely possible that a budget will be ready by the end of this fiscal year, so once again Congress will wind up approving another short-term continuing resolution (CR) when it returns from its August recess.

GOP leaders also may have lost any leverage they hoped to gain from holding the federal debt ceiling hostage for their budget. Congress may have to act before the August recess.  The Washington Post reports, Trump administration warns tax receipts are coming in slowly, government could run out of cash sooner than expected:

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday said that tax receipts were coming in “slower than expected” and that the federal government could run out of cash sooner than it had thought.

Mulvaney’s comments, which came during a House Budget Committee hearing, resurrected an issue that Congress has mostly ignored in recent months but that will soon force some tough political decisions.

A few hours later, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed these concerns, telling another House committee, “I urge you raise the debt limit before you leave for the summer.”

“We can all discuss how we cut spending and how we deal with the budget going forward, but it is absolutely critical that where we’ve spent money, that we keep the credit of the United States as the most critical issue,” Mnuchin told the House Ways and Means Committee. “It is the reserve currency of the world.”

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