See the update below. Events overtook this column within hours of its posting. What can I tell you? I’m not Nostradamus. As it turns out, nothing’s going to happen on November 17. However, nothing is resolved, either. We dodged another bullet, but as it stands there’s another one on the way, and more to come after that. The Democrats stepped in to save Mike Johnson for now, by supporting a continuing resolution, giving him the votes he can’t obtain in his own caucus, but there is still no budget. This is nothing but a temporary reprieve, and the GOP remains incapable of governing, or of being governed. In a way it proves my point: nothing sensible can happen unless sane Republicans work with the Democrats. The next crisis point will be reached early in the new year.
Hey there, newly-minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, how are you enjoying the gig so far? How about that unruly caucus, eh? My oh my , it’s so very hard to get those folks to settle down and do some government stuff, isn’t it? They should listen to you, I mean you’re basically channelling God Almighty Himself is what I’m hearing, and you’d think they’d shut up for a minute and receive Thine Inspired Wisdom. What, are they atheists? Wiccans? Worshippers of Baal? Why won’t they come to Jesus?
Well I’ll tell you, Mike, you Christo-fascist, Bible-thumping tub of oily faux-piety: it’s because they’re a motley mix of lunatics, nihilists, insurrectionists, and power-hungry tribal warriors, and they couldn’t get their shit together if the cruel God of your evangelical fever dreams threatened them all with eternal damnation. Sit their asses down in the House chamber and pass a bill or two? Nah. They’ve got better stuff to do, priority partisan culture war take-no-prisoners stuff, and your purported authority as Speaker doesn’t mean jack shit any more.
Look what they’re up to today. That asshole Comer is still trying to run an impeachment inquiry to smear Joe Biden, concentrating lately on some sort of personal loan Joe gave his brother when they were both private citizens, later repaid, which is supposed to prove something about something, I don’t know. It just came out that Comer himself advanced a similar loan under similar circumstances not long ago. Here he is losing his shit when he’s reminded of this:
If you’re thinking this heated exchange was veering perilously close to fisticuffs, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is what was going on just down the hall:
Boy, good thing Bernie was there! Meanwhile, in the corridor:
Yup, right in front of an NPR reporter (no film crew, sadly), erstwhile Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave fellow Republican Tim Burchett a surprise elbow to the kidney as he passed behind, hard enough that Burchett was almost pushed into the reporter, after which he chased McCarthy down the hall, yelling. Just like the good old days in elementary school! What’s next? Pantsing? Wedgies? An exchange of small arms fire?
I attached the Tweets so you’d know I’m not making this shit up. This all happened today. You know what didn’t happen today? Anything to do with passing a budget bill, that’s what. I’m writing this on Tuesday. The federal government runs out of money this Friday. The continuing resolution that kept the lights on and lost McCarthy his job extended funding for just a few weeks, the bulk of which passed while the morons couldn’t decide who was going to replace poor Kevin, and now it’s crunch time. Again. These useless fuckwits have only three days to pass something and send it down the hall so the upper chamber can vote on it and deliver it to Biden’s desk, and that’s going to be tricky when anything the Republicans might actually pass is bound to be wholly unacceptable to the Democrat-Controlled Senate. They’ll probably try to cut Medicare funding by 50%, or raise the age for Social Security eligibility to 72 years, something like that, while also cutting funding to the IRS (gotta keep the donor class happy!), and omitting any money for Ukraine. It’s all performative bullshit all the time with this gaggle of clowns, scoundrels and irrepressible pantloads.
That’s if they could pass something. So far, Mike Johnson has had to withdraw two draft budget bills from the floor because he didn’t have the votes, and this week, having jetted off to Europe over the weekend to speak at some conference of right wing moonbats – a guy’s gotta seize any excuse to get away from D.C., amiright?- he proposed a two-step process, involving separate bills funding different parts of the government. I’ve been waiting to hear more about that, but so far, nothing.
I say again: the government runs out of money on Friday. Three days from now. Our only hope is another temporary reprieve in the form of a continuing resolution, which maintains current funding for a brief fixed interval, but this is not a budget. It’s just an agreement to arrive back at an impasse in a few weeks, and the Dems won’t vote for any such thing unless it’s “clean”, with no poison pill provisions defunding the FBI, or something equally stupid. This is no way to run a railroad. The United States Government needs an honest-to-God, according-to-Hoyle budget, for the love of mighty Yahweh.
This isn’t funny any more. This is goddam dangerous. It’s quite possible that the Republicans won’t be able to pass a bill at all, let alone in three days. It’s more than possible that they’ll never pass anything that could get past the Democrats in the Senate. Meanwhile, if Speaker Johnson tries to get another CR through the House with help from the Dems, kicking the can down the road for a while, he’ll probably lose his job just like McCarthy did, and then Congress will be paralyzed, again, while they squabble over who should be next. Probably, he’ll choose to avoid Kevin’s humiliation, and let nature take its course.
Even if we avoid a shutdown this time, it’s going to be the same thing, over and over, until something radical is done. We can’t go on like this, and we can’t wait until the next election. We need a small group of non-insane Republicans to bite the bullet, approach Hakeem Jeffries, and agree to vote with the Dems in order to get Congress back to the people’s business. It wouldn’t take many. Seven or eight would provide enough of a margin that the governing coalition could sustain the odd absence due to illness and such.
Jeffries would have to agree to accept some compromises to maintain the defecting Republican’s support, which I expect he would, if he ever gets the chance. Will he? Are there enough Republicans with the guts to accept the risk of being primaried next time around, as the price of putting a stop to the permanent crisis? Are there any that still feel a duty to the institution of Congress, and the people it’s supposed to serve? Or are they all more interested in keeping their precious seats, no matter if the whole edifice of government crashes down around their ears?
This is unsustainable. With MAGA ascendant, every presidential election is the most important of our lifetimes, with democracy itself on the ballot. Every vote that determines the balance of power in both the House and the Senate is a referendum on whether the legislative branch should function, or descend back into chaos. It’s madness. America needs the voting public to come to the rescue. Soon. I’m trying, so hard, to believe it can happen.
the needlefish 