COUNTDOWN TO SHUTDOWN

There are just 24 total congressional legislative working days between now and the end of the US government’s fiscal year on September 30, and only 12 legislative days before the monthlong August recess; congressional leaders have a huge agenda, especially on FY2024 spending bills.

Not only that, they have to deal with the faithless monkey-wrenching of the Confederate traitors of the Fwee-dumb Kaw-kuss.

It used to be, waaaaay back in the early Jurassic (like 1978), that Democrats and Republicans played the same game; not on the same teams, but certainly in the same league, and both sides lived by the same rules. From state legislatures like California to Washington D.C., staffers for Democrats and Republicans could get together over dinners, discuss the Issue Du Jour, figure out what areas of agreement there were that both sides could agree on, and then write an agreement on whisky-soaked cocktail napkins, and each could take their copy home, to hand over to the boss in the morning, secure in the knowledge that the other side would live up to the agreement as written.

Joe Biden thought he and Kevin McCarthy had come to a similar agreement over the debt ceiling and the coming budget negotiations, back in June. Unfortunately, Quiverin’ Qevin is a modern Republican - his word isn’t worth the toilet paper it was written on.

I was personally surprised when McCarthy got the House to approve a deal on the debt ceiling that took the threat of default off the table until early 2025, eliminating the possibility of election-year brinkmanship by the House Krazies on that issue. The fact it took a majority of Democrats to enact it was a warning.

He and President Biden reached a reasonable compromise; much too reasonable, it turns out, for the anti-government morons masquerading as congressional representatives in McCarthy’s fractious ranks.

Yesterday, the 21 members of the far right Kook Kawkuss (the Fwee-dumb Kaw-kuss) wrote a letter to Kevin McCarthy saying they would oppose any appropriations bills that did not reject the June debt ceiling deal that kept the U.S. from defaulting on its debts, thus threatening to shut down the government. The Confederate traitors (most of them are from the Old Confederacy - with a few non-southern Copperheads), obviously outraged at the idea of meeting anyone halfway about anything, are working to renege on the spending targets set in the debt ceiling deal and instead force much deeper cuts.

Demonstrating his own “commitment” to keeping his word and revealing even more clearly his weakness and incompetence, McCarthy has blessed this attempt at changing the rules mid-game after Freedom Caucus members staged a tantrum, blocking the House from getting any work done in late June, to protest the debt ceiling deal.

They don’t have the power to get what they want, since all the other actors - Biden, House Democrats, a bipartisan majority in the Senate - are determined to honor the terms of the agreement. But these looney-bin Confederates can make McCarthy’s life miserable, and perhaps oust him as speaker. And there is a good chance that they can force a government shutdown at the end of September.

Pulling such a stunt would be dumb and self-defeating. But dumb and self-defeating is what they do. The historical record is clear: every time Republicans have forced a government shutdown, they have hurt their own party politically and helped Democrats.

Logic and pragmatism no longer appear to be getting through to the Fwee-dumb Kaw-kuss. Their Southern traitor “fire eater” forebears of the 1850s have nothing on them.

We’re about to find out just how completely crazy, detached from reality and dysfunctional this slim House Republican majority really is. The period from now to the end of September will be an epic dumpster fire.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a letter on Sunday outlining that chamber’s busy agenda for July:

“In the Senate, we are working diligently through regular order on a bipartisan basis to advance appropriations bills. In addition, before we left for the July recess, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act that will invest in our nation’s military and service members and advance our national defense strategy.

“We must continue to compete globally and deepen our strategic ties with our allies and partners, so I hope to move this bill quickly. These two areas – appropriations and NDAA – are prime examples of the bipartisan cooperation we strive to achieve.”

This coming Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2024 Legislative Branch, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Financial Services and General Government spending bills. These will be at the level agreed to under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which House Republicans have rejected.

Demonstrating the power of the nutballs, the House Appropriations Committee is working on spending bills for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 with funding levels about $119 billion less than those set in the Biden-McCarthy compromise. House GOP leaders are cutting tens of billions of dollars from social spending. So the fall’s big clash over spending gets started in earnest this week. Federal spending runs out on Sept. 30.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is working on spending bills based on the numbers in the debt ceiling compromise. “I fully intend to follow the dictates of what we passed in the Senate and the House and what the president signed,” Sen. Patty Murray, chair of the committee, told the New York Times. Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the panel, said “from my perspective, we in the Senate just have to proceed.”

In the House, those members of Quiverin’ Qevin’s asylum who pass as “sane” - i.e., the ones who face re-election in Democratic-majority districts next year - are getting increasingly pissed-off at the wannabee members of Pickett’s Charge, er, I mean the Fwee-dumb Kaw-kuss, and are preparing a Continuing Resolution they want to bring to a vote before the August recess. The only way this will pass is with a bipartisan coalition of Republicans Who Still Posses Brains and Democrats. Democratic leaders have pointed out that they provided the majority of votes to get the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal passed into law, and state they are prepared to join such a Coalition of the Sane in this case. With a CR like this passed already in the House, the ability of the idiots to press the Self-Destruct button will be neutered, since the Senate would obviously pass the House CR legislation if it became necessary.

We have to recognize that the MAGA Morons are not in office to govern. They WANTED to see the United States default on the national debt. They WANT to see the government shut down on October 1. They couldn’t care less what damage either event would do the the economy or the standing of the United States in the world as a guarantor of stability. They want to DESTROY the United States as it exists, because they know they are on the losing side of history and the election of 2024 is their last chance to bring their Fascist Revolution to fruition.

MAGA IS THE ENEMY OF AMERICA - as surely as their Confederate Traitor ancestors were enemies of America.

We have to work these next 16 months like Everything Is On The Line - because it is.

November 2024 is an Existential Moment in our history. And the more the traitors get frustrated - as they will be if they are thwarted on September 30 in their plan to kick the country into crisis - the more they will attempt to create other Existential Crises in the year before the election.

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