Once again, the United States approaches the abyss. There are only three days left for legislators to reach an agreement before midnight on Saturday that avoids the partial administrative shutdown of the Government, and everything points to the worst case scenario.
“Financing the Government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress”, said President Joe Biden. And he added that if they don’t do their job, they can’t continue in office.
At the moment, as the positions are facing each other between the two parties and, the fact that it is even worse inside, given the civil conflict of the Republicans, the lament of Biden is nothing more than wanting the moon in a cave. A way to heal in health, although, no matter what he says, Donald Trump and conservatives in general will blame him.
The route to the agreement is more than confusing, full of obstacles, an impossible mission that even the best editing of Tom Cruise could not solve.
But lawmakers, even those who put every possible stick in the wheel, will continue to be in office and get paid. Their payroll goes the other way with respect to the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who will see their pay suspended. This affects a wide variety of services. It will leave the military without pay. It will cause the closure of federal parks, with consequent damage to the Treasuries of the states that bring in good money. It will cause problems for aircraft traffic, especially due to the possible impact on air traffic controllers. Millions of mothers and children will be left without the assistance programs that provide them with food. Those who perform “critical or essential” services will have to go to work, although not 100% of the workforce and without pay, while waiting for the conflict to be resolved.
The solution gets further and further away as the limit is approached. Senators from both parties reached a temporary agreement Tuesday night, which passed the first procedural hurdle by 77 to 19.
Pending the final vote, the project would maintain funding until November 17 in order to gain more time from the negotiation to fill the public treasury for a year. The plan includes 6 billion to help Ukraine defend against the Russian invasion and as much for disaster relief in the face of the proliferation of fires and floods in many areas of the US.
The White House issued a congratulatory statement for the inclusion of these two games. “The Republicans of the Lower House must join the Senate, do their job, stop playing political games with people’s lives”, he reiterated.
That the project reaches the president’s table was annihilated on Wednesday after the words of Kevin McCarthy, president or speaker of the Lower House, the Republican who holds the third position in the country. There is a unanimous sense in both parties that he is the evil one.
The show he offers is that of a man without character and a weak politician. His dream of being the speaker has turned into a nightmare. A small group of ultra-conservatives has him in their hands like a puppet.
In a closed-door meeting, McCarthy told his colleagues that he won’t even bring up the possibility of the Senate’s tentative bill going to a vote. If he did, and given the narrow margin of the conservative majority, there would be a risk that the votes of Democrats and moderate Republicans would support the legislation.
This would solve the serious problem of the closure of the Government, it would relieve millions of people, but the anger of the ultras would cause them to raise a motion to remove the command from the Lower House. They have already made it very clear.
“Not putting it to a vote is the right thing to do,” said McCarthy. He promised that on Friday he expects to bring a conservative proposal to the public prosecutor’s office, in which he highlights the increase in spending to strengthen the border, without a departure for Kyiv. And it made it now up to Biden to move. “If he wants an open government, let him close the border”, he proclaimed.
McCarthy is ridiculous. At the meeting he pleaded for the support of the ultras. Only if he loses four votes is he defeated, but there are at least eight who oppose the proposal.
“The choice facing Congress is quite simple,” replied Mitch McConnell, head of the Republican minority in the Senate. “We can take the standard approach – he added – and fund the Administration for six weeks at the current rate or we can shut down the Government in exchange for zero progress on policy.”
