Third continuing resolution since September passes Congress to fund federal government into March

WASHINGTON — Congress passed a bill on Thursday that would prevent a partial government shutdown this weekend and keep federal funds flowing through March 1 and March 8.

The Democratic-led Senate voted 77-18 on final passage after considering a few amendments. The Republican-led House soon followed suit, passing it by a vote of 314-108.

The bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law before the funding expires Friday at midnight.

It is the third stopgap bill since last September as the divided Congress struggles to agree on full-year government funding bills. ...

The first stopgap bill led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker. His successor, Johnson, is seeking to avoid the same fate by selling the conservative victories in the latest deal.

More.

Another CR lol: They may have to do this over and over until the election because the Republican majority in the US House is now so razor thin

 Congressional leaders reach short-term spending deal to keep government open until March

The deal would keep the government funded until March, buying legislators more time to craft longer-term, agency-specific spending bills, following the agreement last weekend to set the overall spending level for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion. ...

The short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution or “CR,” will need to pass both the House and Senate before Friday at 11:59 p.m. to avoid a partial government shutdown.

 

US House Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries crows over passage of more of the same old, same old bloated spending by continuing resolution

Looking forward to a Moody's downgrade, if they've got the guts. Congress certainly doesn't.

 

Senate sends funding bill to Biden’s desk, averting a government shutdown :

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a stopgap funding bill Wednesday night, punting the GOP’s spending fight and the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays.

The bipartisan vote was 87-11, with 10 Republicans and one Democrat — Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado — voting against the bill. ...

The short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, cleared the House on Tuesday on a lopsided 336-95 vote, with all but two of the no votes coming from Republicans. The funding bill next heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his expected signature. ...

“No spending cuts, no right-wing extreme policy changes, no government shutdown, no votes tomorrow, Happy Thanksgiving,” he said. “That is a type of report that, when you are able to give it, means morale is very high.”

US House passes 45-day government funding bill 335-91 minus Ukraine aid

 The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days, through Nov. 17, setting up another potential crisis if they fail to more fully fund government by then. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting.

More.

Mike Lee is such a phony, advocating for a clean continuing resolution instead of a last minute omnibus, as if there's much of a difference

 Mike hopes you never hear of regular order again.

Here.

Last guy to mention it I think was Paul Ryan in 2015:

"We need to let every member contribute, not once they earn their stripes, but now," he said. "The committees should take the lead in drafting all major legislation: If you know the issue, you should write the bill. Let's open up the process." "In other words," he said, "we need to return to regular order."

The US Senate quickly approved the omnibus spending bill and already has sent it on to Biden for his signature by the deadline tomorrow

 Story here.

I'm guessing that will be the last spending bill of any significance until September when they have to do another continuing resolution because of the upcoming election in November, after which we'll have another omnibus instead of regular order, which no one even remembers what it looks like anymore.

Our government is perennially dysfunctional.

LA Times: No construction for Trump's wall has begun anywhere because he signed border deal

If Trump had been serious about building the wall, he wouldn't have signed a border deal which ties his hands. He would have vetoed it and proceeded with the national emergency.

Had he done so, legislators would have had little choice but to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government departments threatened with a shutdown at existing levels.

That's the art of the deal, Mr. Big Stuff, but Mr. Big Stuff is all bark and no bite.

Bulldozers sit idle at border amid legal confusion over Trump’s emergency:

No construction for Trump’s wall has begun anywhere, although officials have started or completed fence replacement projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Trump, who made building a border wall a central promise of his campaign, declared the emergency on Feb. 15 to bypass Congress and shift up to $6.6 billion, mostly from the Pentagon budget, to build — or rebuild — 234 miles of fencing.

Trump acted after Congress had appropriated only $1.375 billion for 55 miles of border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, far less than he wanted.

But the 1,169-page appropriations bill Trump signed into law when he issued his emergency declaration also contained restrictions on construction in specific towns, parks and wildlife reserves along about 150 miles of the border in the Rio Grande Valley, which is the administration’s top priority for building new barriers. The restrictions have thwarted Trump’s efforts to build a wall there, at least for now.

An aide to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who helped negotiate the restrictions, said it’s not clear if the terms of the spending bill would override the emergency declaration, or vice versa, leaving landowners and town officials in limbo.

Jack Lew, who presided over an 87% increase in the national debt as Treasury Secretary, is suddenly worried about the debt implications of tax reform

From the election of Obama in 2008 until the election of Trump in 2016, $9.2 trillion were added to the total public debt. We've gone from $10.6 trillion in the hole to $19.8 trillion over the period.

Yet now we hear from Jack Lew in The New York Times here that

"digging a deep hole of debt by cutting taxes will make it harder to pay for other priorities. And when that debt makes deficits skyrocket in the future, policy makers would have to choose between raising taxes and cutting investments and vital benefits. ... Some Republican policy makers suggest they may reject mainstream approaches and assume positive economic effects that go far beyond those normally projected by the budget office and the tax committee. ... Such a reckless move would almost surely produce an explosion of debt."

Actually, the Obama Administration dug a deep hole of debt right off the bat by spending money it didn't have, tacking on $600 billion of spending to Bush's last fiscal year, and then regularizing the increase by avoiding the budget process in favor of continuing resolutions, the Congress' new bipartisan method of fleecing the American people. Deficits skyrocketed contemporaneously, and then Democrat policy makers recklessly passed Obamacare with its spendthrift Medicaid expansion. They didn't have to choose between anything.

The only people more full of horseshit than the Republicans are the Democrat engineers of the Obama economic catastrophe.

The price of the latest continuing resolution will probably be a big tax increase

The last time we had a really big continuing resolution, defying "regular order", the Republicans gave away the store in exchange for lifting the export ban on oil.

Exports began in early 2016. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude has actually risen 51.6% since then, from an average of 31.68 in January 2016 to 48.04 in August 2017.

Larry Kudlow thinks Trump is a genius for clearing the deck with the debt ceiling, hurricane emergency funding, continuing resolution deal with the Democrats because now Congress can finally get down to tax reform and pass it before the end of the year.

Watch your wallets, I say. 

Here's how the House and Senate voted to raise the debt ceiling, fund the government for three more months, and provide hurricane relief

The Senate passed the measure 80-17. That story is here.

The House passed the measure 316-90. That story is here.

See how they use a crisis?

The year 2017 will end without a restoration of regular order in the House, where spending is debated and voted on. And I'm betting we'll never see a return to regular order. It'll be more such continuing resolutions as far as the eye can see.

The debt ceiling is an impediment in genuine emergencies, such as funding disaster relief. But there is no excuse for the continuing dearth of fiscal probity.

There is also no excuse for Trump caving on his promise to shut down the government if he doesn't get funding for The Wall. Extending and pretending was more important to him.

And Trump's new pledge to sign DACA legislation only adds to the perception that he was never serious about The Wall in the first place. He just turned on the magnet again on The Great Illegal Immigration Machine.

One picks the best horse one can, but this horse has decided to drink from The Swamp, not drain it. He'll be promptly unrideable, and we'll have to find another.

If Trump has any balls he'll veto any Continuing Resolution which punts The Wall

Story here.

Republicans promised "regular order". We're not getting it.

Trump isn't fighting to build a wall, in fact he keeps caving

Trump got nothing in the continuing resolution through this fiscal year, and will get even less than he was asking for, if he's lucky, in the next.

Story here.

What a pathetic loser this guy's turning out to be.

You've been had: The 2009 stimulus has been repeated every year, accounting for all GDP increases under Obama and then some

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending because Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time. It was scandalous, but there was nothing Republicans could do about it.

But the same thing happened every year thereafter because the Democrat Congress and then the Republican Congress deliberately passed this prior spending in the form of continuing resolutions instead of through regular order, which meant nothing got debated and the status quo was maintained. That's the evil of CRs.

Both parties did this on purpose instead of debating individual spending bills because . . . THEY ALL LOVE HAVING THE MONEY TO SPEND.

The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion, to which the stimulus got added for fiscal 2009, and just kept getting added and re-added and re-added right through to the present (and then some) through the continuing resolution process:

2009: $535.2 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2010: $474.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2011: $620.6 billion ($3.6 trillion)

2012: $554.5 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2013: $472.1 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2014: $523.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2015: $776.1 billion ($3.8 trillion)

2016: $1.017 trillion ($4.0 trillion).

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president, even after they got control of both the House and the Senate in 2014. Almost $5 trillion in "stimulus" has already been spent.

And Trump wants to add another $1 trillion?

Meanwhile under Obama current dollar GDP increased . . . $4.1 trillion. All government spending. All totally phony. And overpriced at that: $1.21 spent for every dollar of that fake GDP.

Speaker Ryan is still disgraceful, small and weak, still tiptoes up to "regular order" instead of demanding it

And the opposition can smell the weakness.

The job of Speaker is much too big for little Paul Ryan, who appears to have not one single fight in him.

From the story here in Roll Call:

Minibuses would break up the 12 individual spending bills into a few small packages rather than lump them into a single omnibus bill. Ryan has argued that passing minibuses is closer to regular order and would make the appropriations process more digestible. But he's privately acknowledged that such a strategy would likely result in some bills not getting done, leaving the agencies covered by the unfinished measures in need of a continuing resolution to extend funding through the remainder of the fiscal year.

The Far Left Also Realizes Boehner Won. Too Bad Republicans Don't.

The Nation, here:

Because the deal only includes minor concessions, the Beltway consensus is that it represents a resounding defeat for Republicans, who “surrendered” their original demands to defund or delay Obamacare. In the skirmish of opinion polls, that may be true, for now. But in the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

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Boehner, last August, who got exactly this, despite having to try the so-called Tea Party gambit of defunding ObamaCare, which failed because of all the RINOs in the Senate, and was destined to fail from the beginning for that very reason, if only people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had bothered to check their voting records:

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”

Boehner Actually Wins Again Despite Himself: His Position From August 22nd Was A Clean CR Keeping The Sequester, And That's What The Senate Compromise Is Going To Provide

The Washington Post reported, here, at the time:

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that he plans to avert a government shutdown at the end of September by passing a “short-term” budget bill that maintains sharp automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester.

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”

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Well, that's what we're getting from the Senate at the very last minute after a two-week government shutdown: a short term continuing resolution which keeps the sequester cuts for that term.

It was libertarian Republicans who found this unacceptable and forced Boehner to try the shutdown gambit, which was incredibly stupid given the optics of the government running out of funding on September 30th and ObamaCare launching on October 1st. Clearly no one in Boehner's opposition was watching the news stories predicting problems with the internet exchanges, nor reflecting on what powerful weapons they were putting into Obama's hands when they've had five years' worth of examples of Obama usurping powers, acting unconstitutionally, and generally acting "out of character" for a president.

The president continues to go outside the experience of his enemy, but the enemy still hasn't figured that out. Now that they know how far Obama's willing to go, his enemies need to be more careful next time.

The House Should Pass A CR Of $2.983 Trillion And Drive The Blade Home

Now that Republicans have Democrats off balance with a small spending cut, the up-coming vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year presents an opportunity to drive the blade home.

I propose going back to the status quo ante in 2008 when outlays were at $2.983 trillion, and freezing spending at that level until revenues have in fact caught up. In 2013 revenues are estimated to be just under that level, at $2.902 trillion.

Since it was Democrats who abandoned the statutory budget process after 2009 and funded the government through continuing resolutions at the new much higher level laid down that year, nearly 18% higher in 2009 than in 2008, two can play at that game.

If Democrats in the Senate, and Obama, don't like the new diet of $249 billion a month, they can say no and be responsible for shutting down the government.

Just don't telegraph the plan. Keep Democrats off balance as before, demanding Senate action on a budget. We all know they won't pass one, and when they don't, just pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at the last second and adjourn. The procedure will probably have to be done monthly, and probably indefinitely.

There will be wailing, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Table of federal receipts and outlays here. 

CNBC Laughably Portrays Sen. Alan Simpson Of Wyoming As A Conservative

Sen. Lisa MirrorCowSki gets ready for a date!

Republican Alan Simpson has never been a conservative and hates conservatives. When CNBC portrays him as one, here in "More Conservatives Tell GOP: Don't Mess With Debt Ceiling", it's pure propaganda:

"It would be a grave mistake to use the debate on the debt ceiling to get President Obama to agree to spending cuts," Alan Simpson, co-founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt and former GOP senator from Wyoming told CNBC's "Closing Bell" Tuesday.

"I know they're (GOP lawmakers) going to try it and how far they'll go with that game of chicken I have no idea," said Simpson, who was co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles Commission that looked at reducing government debt.

The former Senator from Wyoming may carry some weight with liberal Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Mercowsky of Alaska, but not with conservatives. The last thing liberal Republicans want is for the gravy train to run empty.

Continuing resolutions have done nothing but continue to fund government at the new much higher baseline established by Democrats in 2009 with the addition of massive stimulus spending, after which they have passed no budgets. It was an ingenious strategy to ramp up government spending and keep it there. Republicans only participate in this charade by continuing to raise the debt ceiling which facilitates it.

Republicans should shut down the government until the lawful budget process is restored, which means Sen. Reid must pass a budget out of the Democrat-controlled Senate and send it to the House, which he has not done in violation of the law in place since 1974. If anyone should be impeached in this country, it is Sen. Reid.

Obama Raises Federal Pay $11 Billion Over 10 Years On Eve Of Fiscal Cliff

Now you know why Obama cut his vacation short . . . to raise spending! And rub our noses in it!

This guy is the biggest jerk ever to sit in the Oval Office, maybe excepting Lyndon Baines Johnson who reportedly pissed on the shoes of a soldier who dutifully stood at attention.

If ever anyone needed evidence that El Presidente couldn't care less about the consequences of federal spending for the fiscal situation, this is it. He's "in your face" about it, on the very eve of the biggest tax increase on the American people in living memory, and Republicans still take this guy seriously.

As reported here:

CBO [The Congressional Budget Office] says the (discretionary) cost of the .5% pay-hike the President is calling for in the Exec Order – relative to a freeze – is about $500m in FY 2013 and $11 billion over the ten years from FY 13 - FY 22.  The reason why the FY ’13 savings is only $500 million is because the pay hike as proposed by the President’s Exec Order would not go into effect until April 1st, 2013 - when the current CR [Continuing Resolution] expires. So it only covers half the fiscal year. The annualized cost of the pay hike is about $1 billion/year."

If Republicans had any imagination, they'd shut the damn government down . . . for the next two years, and teach Obama what it's like to run something. Teh.

That would save about $2 trillion of the taxpayers' money as government makes do with current revenues. The sound of the squealing pigs would be worth it.

Rep. Amash, Other Opponents Of Spending, Cave To Avoid A Government Shutdown Crisis

 

 

The Tea Party in Congress is dead, if it were ever alive.

 

Its most ardent wannabes in the Congress have been now fully and completely co-opted by the Republican Party, which couldn't use a crisis to get what it wants if a Democrat spelled it out in an instruction manual. Republicans not only have no principles, they have no skills.

Republican opponents of increased government spending have caved in to a plan to avoid a government shutdown crisis and accept a continuing resolution of at least six months, enshrining spending at the high levels they formerly opposed.

The mood is not dissimilar to the banking panic period around the election of 2008, when Republicans caved in to TARP in order to get past the crisis. They got past it alright, and deservedly lost everything in the process.

The whole point now, they say, is to get past the danger the upcoming election represents, and the lame duck session, periods when government is most responsive to, and most dismissive of, politics, and it is politics which the so-called conservatives now fear. It doesn't occur to them that one of the rewards of an election is the free hand given to the winners to do the will of the people. Gov. Scott Walker's victories on behalf of the people of Wisconsin evidently mean nothing to them. Fear of a lame duck session is simply proof that so-called Tea Partiers in Congress don't have the courage of their convictions.

The election, on the contrary, is the perfect opportunity to crucify the Democrats on the issue of spending, and especially their intransigence on it. Nothing focuses the mind like when your job is on the line.

Well guess what, Republicans? Your job is on the line, too. And I have a keyboard, and an internet connection.

Instead of postponing the issue to next March, outrageous spending should be front and center in October when Americans spend a few days paying attention to it for once. Republicans obviously have no stomach for such fighting. But Democrats do, which is why they win.

Making Democrats take the fall for increased spending and taxes may be difficult work, but if you can't figure out how to do that, then quit, but don't piss down our necks and tell us it's rainin'.

The truth appears to be that the so-called conservatives can see the handwriting on the wall. They have a candidate for president who won't cut spending if elected because that candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, thinks cutting spending would put the country into depression. So-called Tea Partiers in Congress evidently agree with this Keynesian analysis. They'd rather look like they support this absurdity for political ends than do the right thing for the country. They don't want to continue in lonely isolation under a Romney administration. And they certainly don't want to be held responsible for a depression.

In taking this step, the conservatives no longer deserve our support, or our respect.

It's just one more reason why alliance with the Republican Party is the kiss of death for conservatism.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story, including these excerpts, here:

In a bid to avoid a potential government shutdown, several of the House’s most conservative Republicans say they would be willing to go along with a six-month extension of government funding, which is currently set to run out at the end of September, at levels they’ve voted against in the past. ...

The idea is spearheaded by Sens. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, the most prominent tea party figure in Congress, and Lindsey Graham (R), South Carolina's senior senator. It was laid out in a letter signed by 20 Republicans to House and Senate GOP leaders on Wednesday. But support for the move is wider than the initial signatories: Even Rep. Justin Amash (R) of Michigan, who voted against the Republican budget proposal in March because he said it cut too little from government spending, said he would vote in favor.

And here's a little news flash for you: Lindsey Graham is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Tea Party, or a conservative.

As for Rep. Amash, I guess your precious "consistency" has its limits, eh Justin?