government shutdown

As Congress dithers, CHIP funding to begin running out next week

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When both political parties broadly agree that something should happen yet serially fail to follow through, the nation’s leaders look particularly inept. Congress’s failure to re-up CHIP funding shows its striking ineptitude:

The example of the moment is the ongoing saga of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a popular service that covers 9 million young Americans — and that is rapidly running out of cash, alarming families that rely on the federal aid to keep their children healthy.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress created CHIP in 1997 to assist families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the poor, yet who do not have reasonable alternative options for insuring their children. Given that decent health care in early years is crucial, lawmakers rightly decided to invest in the nation’s future health. The program has been a remarkable success, driving children’s uninsured rate down to about 4 percent.

But, unlike Medicaid, Congress did not make CHIP an entitlement program that automatically and perpetually draws as much money as it needs from the treasury. Rather, it required lawmakers to regularly re-up CHIP’s funding, which they did in 2015, under the reasonable assumption that Congress would not want to be blamed for kicking children off their insurance.

The 2015 funding dried up in September, and lawmakers pumped in enough emergency funds to sustain the program for only a few months. States have begun planning for a funding shortage, with some warning families that their coverage might lapse. The disruption uselessly alarms parents, scrambles doctors’ planning and eats up time state officials could use for more important things.

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DACA runs into a wall again

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Democratic and Republican congressional leaders will meet on Wednesday with top White House officials as they attempt to hammer out a deal to avert a government shutdown and resolve an impasse on immigration. POLITICO reports, Bipartisan DACA, spending talks set to commence with White House:

The meeting, confirmed by two sources familiar with the planning, was initially expected to include President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, but a White House spokesman said legislative affairs director Marc Short and budget director Mick Mulvaney would represent the president. The meeting comes as President Donald Trump attempts to squeeze Democrats to force action on one of his most iconic, divisive policy proposals: a wall on the southern U.S. border.

Trump has signaled in recent days that he would support a measure to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors in exchange for wall funding and other stiff border security measures that Democrats have ardently opposed.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brushed off the president’s tweet.

Democrats have repeatedly said they won’t sign on to a government funding bill without striking a deal to protect Dreamers.

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A government shutdown for Christmas? (Updated)

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Tea-Publicans return to Congress today facing a packed agenda with little time to enact it, as GOP leaders aim to quickly pass their “tax cuts for corporations and plutocrats” bill, and then turn to a budget deal with Democrats before midnight on Friday to avert a government shutdown. GOP faces 5-day scramble to pass tax bill, avoid government shutdown:

Republicans’ tight timing on taxes is self-imposed. GOP lawmakers have for months been racing to meet President Trump’s demand that they send him tax legislation before Christmas — a timeline that gained new urgency when Alabama Democrat Doug Jones won the Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Luther Strange (R).

GOP leaders hope to hold tax votes early in the week before moving to the budget bill. They need Democrats’ help to pass the budget measure through the Senate, and thus far they have made little progress bringing them aboard amid disagreements over spending levels, protection from deportation for certain undocumented immigrants (DACA) and a federal health insurance program for low-income children (CHIP).

The outcome of the tax votes, however, appears certain after Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.) on Friday pledged their support. The two gave the GOP the Senate votes to pass the bill, even as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, returned to Arizona on Sunday. He is not expected to vote on the final bill.

The tax measure’s passage would mark the first major legislative “accomplishment” — defined as actually passing a bill, a low bar — for Trump and GOP leaders in a year of stumbles, the products of months of negotiations and late adjustments aimed at winning over the last holdouts.

It’s only an “accomplishment” for the oligarchy, not the American people:

Congress’ nonpartisan tax analysts, joining several other nonpartisan assessments, concluded that the bulk of the bill’s benefits would go to the wealthy and corporations. Those analyses have also projected that the cuts will produce far less economic growth than Trump and administration officials are promising.

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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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