Lucky for the Republicans who run the House, few Americans have been paying attention to his antics lately, as the focus is on the presidential race. Here’s what we do: busyness is the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
“Led” by Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson, Republicans are again threatening to take action to shut down the government. After a long summer recess, they’re back after Labor Day and out to score preelection points — epitomized by Donald Trump — instead of seriously pursuing legislation to keep the government funded. And they did this just a few weeks before the beginning of October 1 of the new fiscal year, although they had a month for regular bills for the operation of the federal funds to order the last-minute take-bag.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. He has decades of experience in the White House and Congress.
that strategy is doomed – and they are understand it’s doomed – it’s a familiar one: Put the right-wing pet priorities into the funding package and try to force the majority of the Democratic Senate and President Biden to accept it under pressure of the deadline. Except House Republicans don’t have enough voice to pass the package, given the opposition of party defectors as well as Democrats.
In past years, Republican “poison pills” on funding bills have included proposals targeting Obamacare, abortion rights, immigrants and transgender people. This time the immigrants are the target again. They are calling for legislation that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Voting by non-citizens it has become a crime and one that actually no one perform.
But for this unworthy reason, House Republicans will shut down the government.
There is a silver lining. Fiscal folly is a welcome preelection reminder of Republicans’ inability to govern, and why voters should strip them of their majority in November.
The current saga is also a reminder that, if Republicans retain their majority and Trump becomes president, they will act as an extension of the sorry White House — not as the independent branch of government that the founders wanted.
Trump publicly issued the order to all just hours before last week’s debate with Kamala Harris. On social media post On Tuesday, he characterized the proof-of-citizenship requirement as a necessary “Election Security” measure to prevent Democrats from cheating. Consider previewing the fraudulent claim that he lost to Harris.
Without proof of citizenship, Trump wrote, Republicans in Congress “You, in no way, shape, or form, are moving forward with a continuing resolution on the budget. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘ENTER’ VOTER REGISTRATION WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. STOP THIS – SHUT IT UP!!! “
The speaker complied, although you’d think Johnson would be fed up with being humiliated by his party and its leaders, just to stay in Trump’s good graces. Trump’s bill that Trump blessed didn’t seem extreme enough to the far-right faction of the House (they never voted to kill the bill), but the measures were too extreme for threatened Republican moderates. (Moderate is a relative term when it comes to House Republicans.)
Lacking support for the budget bill, Johnson canceled a House vote on Wednesday, saying he needed more time to have “family conversations” with Republicans. If the majority corrals slim and the bill does not pass, it is DOA in the Senate.
And the follies continue.
Only last November, just after the election as speaker, the impotent Johnson spoke to a group of Christian nationalists and compared to Moses, divinely chosen to lead House Republicans – and America – to some political promised land.
At the Museum of the Bible in Washington, Johnson told the group a long story about how, in the midst of jockeying House Republicans to replace Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, God woke him up in the night and told him to be ready for the “Red Sea. .” Then, after Republicans rejected another candidate for speaker for several weeks, God rose again, Johnson recounted. “God said, ‘Go ahead.’
“Me?” Johnson asked. He. They are doing God’s will, and they are doing Trump’s will, or try to, since.
We know how the funding battle will end: with Republican withdrawal. He won’t pass the bill, Johnson will accept a compromise — as McCarthy must, depending on Democratic votes — and he won’t shut down the government before the election. They are eager to go home for the campaign.
After two more weeks of partisan scuffling, until or beyond the midnight September 30 deadline, Congress will likely pass a three-month bill, free partisan add-ons, funding the government until mid-December. Biden will sign. Then the House and Senate will return after the election for a lame-duck session and fight directly into the holiday season through spending measures again, against the background of the new Congress that began in January.
And that’s where the follies can end. Democrats have long been favored, slightly, to control the House, and the prospect of a takeover good after Harris replaced Biden at the top of the party’s ticket. If Republican House Strip Voters are in the majority, away–right extremists will be relegated to the backbench where they belong. “Moses” Johnson will retire as speaker. And the Democrats, led by the leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, will school Republicans on how bills actually become law.
A House Democrat, and the first Black speaker. That’s the ticket.
@jackiekcalmes
