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IN CONGRESS: Now That The Default Clock Has Been Reset to 2025 What Are Our Congress Critters Doing? [1]

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Date: 2023-06-16

Good Day All! Anyone interested in a break from Trump news? I know I am!

For those who might be interested, I thought I would do a little post-debt crisis look into what our Congress is up to now. Let’s start with the House shall we.

House :

House MAGA Revolt — As many of you already know, the MAGA Free-dumb Caucus staged a little mini-revolt against Barely Speaker McCarthy as they felt he screwed them over in the debt ceiling bill (because he did). They apparently decided against a Motion to Vacate, which, since they did not have a replacement Speaker who could get enough Republican votes to beat McCarthy, would have only resulted in another 15 or more votes stalemate. Also, they couldn’t be sure that the Democrats didn’t or wouldn’t make some “behind-the-scenes” deal to either keep McCarthy in the Speaker’s Chair or put some moderate Republican in his place. So the MAGA Caucus decided to instead embarrass McCarthy by voting against the Rule to open debate on one of their own bat-shit crazy bills to prevent the Biden administration from banning gas stoves (HR 1615 & HR 1640). (BTW, Biden has no intention to ban gas stoves, but since Fox News said he did, they figured it must be true.)

With this shot across McCarthy’s bow, as detailed in this Joan McCarter Post, the Free-dumb Caucus shutdown the House by telling McCarthy they would vote against bringing any Bill to the floor until their demands were met, which at first, no one including them knew what those demands were. In the end they settled on the 12 Appropriations Bills and “apparently” got McCarthy to agree to limit new Fiscal Year 2024 spending bills to the Fiscal Year 2022 topline levels, as detailed in this McCarter Post. Such a limit would result in substantial cuts to all discretionary programs, including Defense, well beyond those agreed by the spending level caps in the debt ceiling which were based on FY 2023 spending levels. I say “apparently”, because it is uncertain what McCarthy actually agreed to. He could have just agreed to allowing these Bills to come to the House floor for a vote, without any commitments after that. Meaning that if they failed a House vote or if the Senate amended them or refused to take them up, McCarthy could move on to make a deal with Democrats as he did with the debt ceiling Bill.

So here’s the confusing part that had me scratching my head. From Joan's Post:

Granger [the Appropriations Committee Chair] promised in a press release, thereby putting an official stamp on the House Republicans’ intent to shut the government down this fall. Because that’s what this means: The Senate will not agree to these cuts, and Biden won’t sign them. A government shutdown is all but inevitable.

Yes, a government shutdown is normally what would happen if Appropriations Bills or a Continuing Resolution ( a resolution to continue funding government programs for a period of time at current levels) were not passed by September 30. However, I originally thought that the Debt Ceiling Bill (HR 3746) kept the government from shutting down by allowing government funding to continue beyond September 30, albeit at 1% less for all programs, including defense, if Appropriations Bills were not passed by then. This is how the “media” was reporting it, saying this was Biden’s way of pressuring Republicans to pass FY 2024 Appropriations Bills at FY 2023 or higher levels so as to avoid Defense cuts, the Republican’s sacred cow.

But here is what a partial summary of HR 3746 actually says:

(Sec. 102) This section requires the discretionary spending limits to be revised if a continuing resolution (CR) is in effect at beginning of the calendar year. Specifically, if a CR for FY2024 or FY2025 is in effect on or after January 1 of 2024 or 2025 for any discretionary budget account, the discretionary spending limits for that fiscal year must be revised to specified levels. CBO has estimated that the revised limits will be lower for defense spending and higher for nondefense spending compared to the original limits. If all of the regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year are enacted before April 30, the revised limits revert to the original limits. If a CR is in effect on April 30 of 2024 or 2025, a final sequestration order must be issued based on the revised limits.

The best I can make out from this legislative mumbo jumbo, is that if Congress passes a CR before September 30 of this year to keep the government funded and running, it must include revised discretionary spending limits, which would be lower for defense and higher for nondefense spending than the current FY 2023 levels. However, if Appropriations Bills are passed before September 30, FY 2024 spending limits would revert to FY 2023 levels (i.e., no cuts).

So without passing Appropriations Bills or a CR, the government would shutdown. Passing Appropriations Bills will not reduce defense spending, however passing a CR would reduce defense spending. At least that’s my interpretation of the above summary. I could be wrong, and will not be offended if corrected in the comments.

Anyway, the “deal” McCarthy made with the Free-dumb crazies got the House up and running this past week, so they were able to pass their Gas Stove Protection Bill and other equally crappy bills that will not be taken up by the Senate. However, not all House Republicans are happy about this “deal”, as evident by this tweet from Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the freshmen from New York who is in a district that voted for Biden.

There are 222 members of the conference — not 11, 20, or 50. The “power” resides in having a majority (delivered by those of us in competitive districts). Some folks in the conference need to recognize their voice isn’t the only one that matters.

Whether this anger with their fellow Republicans in the Crazy Caucus translates in to some sort of deal with Democrats to keep the government funded and running past September 30, remains to be seen. With only 32 scheduled in session days between now and September 30 we will soon see if McCarthy sides with the MAGA crazies to trigger a shutdown or with the 2024 vulnerable Republicans to keep things open and once again screw over the MAGA crazies. Also, as pointed out in today's post by Joan McCarter not only are Senate Democrats obviously not going to play ball with the House Crazy Caucus, Senate Republicans are also not interested in another hostage taking and are working with Senate Democrats to abide by the higher budget caps in the debt ceiling bill.

Some Good News — A resolution (H. Res. 437) to censure Dem. Rep. Adam Schiff (which included a ridiculous $16 million fine, for his role in the Congressional investigation of Trump/Russia collusion in the 2016 election, FAILED to pass the House. Actually, as detailed in this Joan McCarter Post, the Democrats successfully tabled the resolution by a vote of 225 to 196, with help from 20 sane Republicans, who surprisingly did not buy into this MAGA foolishness.

Senate :

For the Senate this week, they did the only thing they can do when the House is dysfunctional, and that is confirm administrative officials and judges. Altogether they confirmed 2 administrative officials and 4 judges this week. Since these judges were for New York and California Districts, it appears that Senator Durbin is still allowing Republicans to block District Court Judge nominees from Red States via the informal “Blue Slip” process. So frustrating! Fortunately, the Blue Slip process doesn’t apply to Appellate Court nominees. However, if Durbin continues to allow the Republicans to hold Blue Slips for Red State nominees, the Senate could run out of District Judges to confirm and leave it doing nothing, just like the House. Hopefully, Schumer won’t allow that to happen.

In other Senate non-action, Senator Tuberville continued his one-man hold on military promotions over the military’s policy of reproductive freedom. Although, the Military’s top brass has made it clear that the lack of these promotions are leaving key leadership positions vacant and are posing a threat to our National Security and Military readiness, that’s apparently not enough for Durbin to break with tradition and take advantage of Tuberville's absence.

As pointed out in this Joan McCarter Post, Democrats blew an opportunity this week to confirm all the military promotions by Unanimous Consent when Tuberville was absent from the Senate (He was at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club to provide moral support to the twice-indicted walking, talking national security threat.). Here’s what Durbin told a reporter about the situation:

Durbin tells me it would be “tempting” to UC military promotions with Tuberville missing but notes that “one of the unwritten rules of the place is you don’t take advantage of a person’s absence.”

So Durbin is apparently more worried about Tuberville crying “foul”, than he is about our National Security. Give Me A Break!

BTW — It’s not out of fear that the Republicans will do it to us if we take advantage of an absence, because they already did. When Feinstein was out ill, they blocked putting a temporary replacement on the Judiciary Committee, blocking the Committee’s ability to approve judiciary nominees. So our side plays by the un-written rules, while their side doesn’t. Again, Give Me A Break!

I hope Schumer puts an end to these un-written Republican blockades soon, or the Senate will become just as dysfunctional as the House.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/16/2175749/-IN-CONGRESS-Now-That-The-Default-Clock-Has-Been-Reset-to-2025-What-Are-Our-Congress-Critters-Doing

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