Breakdowns and Shutdowns

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson faced his first test, and he apparently failed.

He wanted a vote on a continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown and keep government spending at current levels for the time being, with no additional aid to Israel and Ukraine, to allow Congress to negotiate a more permanent budget deal.  But members of his own fellow Republicans - mostly from the MAGA wing - voted against it, as they want to see immediate and drastic cuts in domestic spending.  Johnson needed help from the Democrats to pass such a resolution, and Democrats, recognizing the need for a continuing resolution, helped it pass.

Johnson tried a typical Republican party trick of offering a proposal he figured the Democrats wouldn't support, thus allowing the government to shut down, but with several Republicans in the House already opposed to this strategy, he allowed the resolution to pass.  The Senate has indicated that it will pass it as well.

Government shutdowns have been part and parcel of politics in Washington since 1981, when President Reagan vetoed a continuing resolution to keep the government open while both houses of Congress were negotiating in good faith to come up wit ha budget.  That had been standard procedure before the 1980s, but Reagan wanted to use the threat of the government running out of money to force cuts he felt were necessary.  The ploy only caused chaos, and chaos eventually became a Republican tool.  For the most part, though, Republicans rarely pay a political price for causing government shutdowns.  Although the public largely blamed Republicans for the 2013 government shutdown, the party was rewarded with control of the Senate and an expanded majority in the House the following year. 

So if you think Democrats should have let the GOP allow the government to shut down so that the Democrats would have a political issue to run on in 2024, think again.  A shutdown is the last thing Democrats or the country needs right now.  

On the Brink

President Biden's infrastructure bills are stalled in Congress, with moderate and progressive Democrats at odds with each other over how much to spend in new programs - "human infrastructure" - in a budget reconciliation measure.  Moderates want to go no higher than $1.5 trillion in spending over the net ten years on child care, climate change, and college tuition, while progressives want to spent no less than $3.5 trillion - after compromising down from $6 trillion.  And if House progressives don't get what they want, they're going to vote against a bipartisan bill on rebuilding roads, bridges and railways already passed by the Senate. The vote is scheduled for tomorrow and anyone who thinks it's going to pass while the $3.5 trillion bill - called a reconciliation bill because it's meant to reconcile with the budget - is opposed by moderate Democrats in both houses is either an unwarranted optimist, a moron, or both.

And the time to cut a deal is growing short.

Republicans, meanwhile, have taken advantage of Democratic infighting by refusing to cooperate on keeping the government open at the start of the 2022 fiscal year this coming Friday and also refusing to cooperate on raising the debt ceiling by not allowing itto be attached to a bill to keep the government open, meaning the United States could default for the first time ever as early as next week. 

All this while a major hurricane churns in the Atlantic Ocean and could strike the East Coast by the end of the week, causing billions of dollars in damage?

Prepare to meet thy doom.      

Headed For a Cliff

Just when Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate more with the special prosecutor's office investigating Trump, Trump goes haywire and pulls troops out of Syria before the job fighting ISIS is done and he may end up firing Robert Mueller before his job - and the calendar year 2018 - is done.  And now Defense Secretary James Mattis - the last person in the administration keeping Trump at bay and the one person who could have served in an O'Malley administration (and still could have done so in 2021 if not for having take n the job under Trump first) - is quitting over Trump's Syria decision.  Trump is so hell-bent on isolating the United States that I have to remind everyone what I once said about his wall - it can keep people in as well as keep people out.

Speaking of the wall, Trump has vowed to shut down the government over funding for said wall to the tune of five billion dollars.  Congressional Republicans are scrambling to stop a shutdown Trump says he is proud to be responsible for.  This could be politically disastrous for congressional Republicans and the White House, but who cares when all that matters to the GOP is to destroy the Democrats (before the Democrats have the pleasure of destroying themselves)?  Similarly, although Republican senators are increasingly calling out Trump for his foreign policy, who cares, when Trump can do whatever he wants on the world stage? 

America is about to go over the cliff.  We'll barely get through the rest of 2018, but I fear that no one will get out of 2019 alive, in which case talk about the 2020 presidential election will be moot. 

This is all giving me a headache . . ..   

Murphy's Law of Budgeting - Take Two

Well, I sure got it wrong!

What I thought was a triumph for New Jersey governor Phil Murphy - getting a budget passed and avoiding a shutdown - has actually turned out to be a defeat for him.  Murphy may have gotten increased taxes on the the super-rich and may have gotten more revenue from a tax on corporations, but what he really wanted was a permanent tax on those making more than one million dollars a year, not five million as passed, and he got neither.  If anyone got everything he wanted, it was Stephen Sweeney, the less progressive Democratic Senate president.  Murphy may have to go back to the legislature to ask for more money for his priorities, but his proprieties are not Sweeney's . . . and Sweeney's top priority is cutting public-employee pensions, something Murphy did not campaign on.

Murphy didn't make concessions on the budget because he wanted to avoid state beach closures. He made them because he didn't want to play politics and remain above the political rancor.  In avoiding a fight, he ceded much of his power to Sweeney, who now holds all the cards.  Murphy can propose the most ambitious liberal agenda in New Jersey history and Sweeney can put the brakes on any or all of it without so much as lifting a finger. 

And the taxes that were passed, all of which are temporary and some of which expire before the next gubernatorial election, may hurt Democratic chances not to keep the New Jersey legislature but to win back Congress.  New Jersey Republicans are tying the state tax increases to Democrats running for U.S. House and Senate seats using the old "birds of a feather" argument; if we can expect higher taxes on "hard-working families" and the like from Democrats in Trenton, we can expect New Jersey Democratic candidates for Congress to back the same sort of punitive taxes in Washington.  That argument almost worked for New Jersey Republican Christine Todd Whitman when she ran against Democratic Bill Bradley for U.S. Senate in 1990 and made Governor Jim Florio's unpopular tax agenda an issue.  She came very close to winning Bradley's Senate seat.  Three years later, she was elected governor of New Jersey.  

Whether New Jersey congressional candidates and Trenton Democrats are birds of a feather, Phil Murphy's administration isn't a turkey just yet.  He's already accomplished a good deal of his efforts to roll back the conservative agenda of Chris Christie, and he's still in a good position to get more done.  But he has to take on Sweeney and realize that Sweeney answers to him, not the other way around.  He has to be more political and less diplomatic; the New Jersey governorship isn't a job where you smooth things out with charm and grace, like being ambassador to Germany, Murphy's last (and first) political job (which he was appointed, not elected, to). 

As for me . . . well, I'm obviously not good at getting some things right.  It's obvious that there's more to Phil Murphy - and in some cases, less - than I originally thought.  I haven't been this embarrassed since I thought Al Franken would survive a sex scandal.  I hope Murphy becomes more effective as he grows more into his job.  There's still a lot more for him to do.  But for now, when it comes to power in Trenton, it's Steve Sweeney's world; Murphy is merely signing legislation in it.      

Lying There and Staring at the Ceiling

President Obama's speech tonight about raising the debt ceiling was meant to get Americans to rise to the occasion and call members of Congress for a balanced approach. He left the podium in the East Room with Americans - at least this American - even more pessimistic. Though Obama tried to be reasonable and offered the House Republican leadership all sorts of cuts along with tax increases as a peace offering, he offered no real re-assurance that the middle class would get a fairer shake from Washington. Obama's latest remarks were no more eye-opening and inspiring than his earlier remarks.

House Speaker John Boehner treated Obama's milquetoasty remarks as impudent sarcasm, and he offered a good heap of his own. Boehner refused to acknowledge any of Obama's overtures and even blamed the President for the economic mess we're in, declaring that he would never submit to any reckless taxation and spending offered by the White House. Boehner wants only to cut, cap, and balance expenditures - really, cut, cut, and cut - and allow a debt ceiling increase only for six months to set the stage for cutting, cutting, and more cutting. We're left with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's plan, which would allow a greater amount of cuts with no tax increases on the rich and with savings projections based on the winding down of war expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to extend the debt ceiling beyond the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

This is progress?

Obama said that letting the debt ceiling expire isn't proper for the greatest nation on earth. It isn't proper for America either.

Back From The Brink

The federal government averted a shutdown and possibly serious damage to the economy, thus denying late-night comedians opportunities for cheap laughs for their monologues Monday night.

As of this writing, details are sketchy, and we should learn more about the particulars in the week ahead. Planned Parenthood funding has been saved for the remainder of fiscal 2011, but the Democrats had to agree to over $38 billion in cuts to various social and discretionary programs. Many people are afraid President Obama gave away too much too soon, and, by the way, several critical infrastructure projects are on hold. (Aren't they all critical?) Incredibly, House Speaker John Boehner is under attack for conceding too much for the Republicans, and Tea Party activists are already threatening to produce a challenger against him in the next House Republican primary in his Ohio district.

It seems that both sides lost by stopping a shutdown.

Anyway, this isn't the real fight in determining federal budget policy for the next decade or so. The big fights come in crafting a 2012 budget and prioritizing the country's needs, along with raising the debt ceiling to keep the government able to borrow money. I believe the Democrats forfeited their objectives on this issue so they can figure out how they're going to cave on the next two.

I don't see much hope for this country in the immediate future . . . or beyond that.