Go on, guess! No, really – guess! This one’s easy! I’ll give you a hint: we’ve been through the same thing dozens of times already! All right, all right, another hint: it’s a symptom of profound political dysfunction, caused entirely by the GOP, that threatens to undermine pretty much all of the bedrock tenets of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, while giving the American economy an energetic, enthusiastic, steel-toed kick to the nuts!
No?
O.K., fine then, the answer is that beginning in a little over a week, the federal government runs out of money. Yes, really. Yes, we’re back there again. I know, I know. But honest, it’s true, and no fooling. The three people who read my pre-Christmas posts on the last round of budget shenanigans, which ended with the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his replacement by the execrable Mike Johnson, and the adoption of yet another weak-assed, kick-the-can-down-the-road “continuing resolution”, will remember that the temporary funding agreement reached at that point only kept the lights on until mid-January, at which time the bullshit would have to begin all over again, starting from Stinking Fucking Broken Budget Process Square One.
Well, it’s mid-January! So here we go!
Sigh.
Listen, I know you’re weary of this shit. Don’t you think I know that? I am too. Don’t you think that I am too? You think I wallow happily in this rank and squishy political turd pile? You think I like writing about it? You think I’m so lost in the gamesmanship that I’ve lost track of what’s really at stake? For the love of God, what do you take me for anyway? What calibre of desiccated, blood-starved, aging husk of a brain do you think occupies my gradually fossilizing skull? Huh? Look, I may be an obsessive A-hole, and slowly going senile, but I’m not insensible to the big picture. I’m not! I’m not a frickin’ idiot! You have no call to cast such aspersions my way. Calumny! It’s calumny, I say!! Why, I oughtta…
[Deep breath]
Never mind.
There’s a point to this update.
God, I’m tired.
But I must press on, because it’s starting to get interesting, and we’re approaching a fork in the road. See, current GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson may be a smug, cruel, bullying religious bigot, but it’s starting to seem as if he’s nowhere near the witless bag of rocks that the late, lamented Kevin McMeathead was. Johnson, despite being the very archetype of the Worthless Generic White Guys who’ve been dominating policy since the Republic’s founding, seems to understand a couple of fundamental truths. Most important, just now, is that he appears to comprehend that his extremely narrow majority in the House doesn’t make him the Lord High Chancellor of Leverage in a multi-tiered government that includes a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President. How? I’m guessing that as a child, he was exposed to that “I’m just a Bill” educational cartoon created way back in the Seventies for the Schoolhouse Rock cartoon series, and therefore knows what’s what (in which case maybe he saw the “Conjunction Junction” episode too!). So he knows that the House Republicans, supposing there aren’t so many as three or four defections, can pass any extreme tax-cutting, poor-harming, social-safety-net-decimating budget they like, but it won’t get anywhere. He also seems to appreciate, perhaps having studied the rise and fall of 1990s fiscal terrorist Newt Gingrich, that the political party that actually shuts down the government can sometimes get blamed for the resulting ruinous government shut-down. Not necessarily, but possibly. Which is scary, what with elections coming up.
So, what’s he done? Swear to God, Mike just reached an agreement with the Democrats to implement the exact same budget deal that led to McCarthy’s political termination with extreme prejudice. A few changed details, probably, but in the main, the exact same deal that McCarthy made with Biden during the debt ceiling crisis. The one that Marge, Matt, and Lauren hung around Kevin’s neck like an albatross, before kicking his pale ass out of the Speaker’s office, the poor, grasping bastard. He deserved it, sure, but it was ugly.
So what now? The House rules haven’t changed from the twisted, anarchistic package that the Freedom Caucus extorted out of Kevin back when the hapless chowderhead was plainly ready to do anything to get ahold of the gavel (why, I sometimes wonder, didn’t they also demand that he drop his pants and dance?). Any one Representative can still bring a motion to toss Speaker Johnson out, and force what amounts to a vote of no-confidence. Firebrand Chip Roy is already talking about doing just that. But would he, really? Will his ordinarily bomb-throwing allies let him? Do they dare? Are they really ready to give Mike the heave, and initiate yet another clown show/dumpster fire of a weeks-long process to find still another Speaker, while the government shuts down for the duration? Do they really have the cajones?
In which case, who’d still want the job? Jim Jordan, God help us? Monumentally racist dickhead Steve Scalise? Is anybody in the plainly intellectually stunted and politically misguided so-called Freedom Caucus actually so off-the-charts stupid as to kick off yet another ludicrous leadership shit show, just to arrive at one of those unaccomplished and thoroughly discredited retread chucklefucks? Is there some other unknown moron still willing, possibly waiting in breathless anticipation at his fetid patch of whichever fever swamp it was that Johnson came from? The mind boggles.
If not, then they get the same deal that cost poor, self-neutering Kevin his job, and the whole tortured process that got us to Mike Johnson, bless his pointed evangelical head, was all for nothing.
It’s hilarious, in a way, but it must be remembered that vital budget measures to support Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel are currently on hold, while the Republicans try to figure out what, exactly, they want to blackmail out of the Dems about border security, or whatever, before they’re willing to play along with all this governing nonsense. The American legislative machinery is already seized up, but good. Layering on yet another bout of complete paralysis while the goddam idiots in the Freedom Caucus decide who they next want to stand there at the dais, going bang–bang–bang with the little wooden mallet, could have grave human and geopolitical implications, because meanwhile, the entire international community, upon whose perceptions so much of what happens next may turn, watches in disbelief, while its most important members are being forced to re-assess their own perils, options and opportunities. For the moment, allies and enemies alike don’t quite know what to think anymore, not yet, though it’s dawning on all of them that the United States of the pre-Trump era isn’t really back, despite Biden’s best efforts and reassuring assertions to the contrary, and may never be coming back. Not ever. Once everybody reaches that firm conclusion, watch out.
Ladies and gents, I give you the self-proclaimed Greatest Nation on Earth, now and for all time. Never mind that Rome had better governance under Caligula. Shush now. Remember, America is the Shining City on a Hill. Ronnie Reagan said so, and when was he ever wrong about anything?
the needlefish 