Congress Averts Another Costly Federal Furlough –

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republicans in Congress who still actively support Trump’s insurrection against American democracy walked up to the edge of the abyss this week, stared into the bottomless pit, and stepped back from the brink.

After a few Republicans in the House and Senate tried playing with political fire by threatening to shut down the United States government at Christmas in the middle of a new assault from another coronavirus variant — just to appear antivax for their most conservative constituents and to try to earn political points — they succumbed to a deal at the last minute Thursday night and passed legislation to keep the government funded through mid-February.

“This is so silly, that we have people who are anti-science, anti-vaccination, saying they’re going to shut down government over that,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, visibly exasperated, said at her weekly news conference. “We’re not going to go for their acts of anti-vaccine, OK?”

“So if you think that’s how we’re going to keep government open,” she added, “forget that.”

Related: Congressional Republicans Play With Political Fire by Threatening a Government Shutdown

According to on the ground coverage from The New York Times for Friday’s paper, the House voted 221 to 212 to approve the continuing resolution funding the government, with just one Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, joining Democrats in the vote.

The Senate then passed the funding bill on a 69-to-28 vote, sending it to President Biden’s desk for his signature. The 50 Democrats supporting the measure were joined by 19 Republicans, averting another all too familiar crisis over keeping the American government running for another couple of months.

The fate of the legislation remained in doubt for much of the day Thursday in the Senate, where unanimity was needed to expedite the bill’s passage before government agencies, including the National Park Service, began shutting down with federal workers forced into furlough mode.

A few Republicans threatened to object to the funding bill over the Biden administrations funding for vaccine mandates in the private sector, especially in the most dangerous places where the virus spreads, like airports.

“I’m glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed — the government will stay open,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown.”

Leaders in both parties had warned against a government shutdown and had urged their colleagues to find alternative ways to register their opposition to the vaccine mandates. Multiple lawmakers and aides noted that the Senate was already on track to vote later this month on a Republican bid to roll back the rule for private sector employees.

Senior Democrats and Republicans in Congress hailed the spending agreement, saying it would afford them more time to resolve outstanding disputes and approve longer-term legislation to fund the government next year.

“While I wish the Feb. 18 end date were earlier, and I pursued earlier dates, I believe this agreement allows the appropriations process to move forward toward a final funding agreement that addresses the needs of the American people,” said House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut.

Members of Congress have long conceded that they need more time to negotiate the dozen bills that would fund the government for the entire fiscal year, but the stopgap measure had become ensnared in partisan disagreements over how long it should last and what additional funding proposals could be attached.

Because the short-term legislation maintains existing funding levels, it will effectively codify through mid-February what had been negotiated with the Trump administration. Democrats had pushed to do so only through late January, as they are eager to enact their own funding levels and priorities while in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

“This is not a victory lap,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who is retiring next year. “We are two months into the fiscal year and appear no closer to getting an agreement on full-year appropriations bills. With this vote we are buying time to complete those negotiations, and we must.”

As part of the short-term measure, both parties agreed to provide $7 billion for Afghan evacuees who fled the country after the Taliban regained control and American troops withdrew. The additional funding includes about $4.3 billion for the Defense Department to care for evacuees on military bases, $1.3 billion for the State Department and $1.3 billion for a division of the Department of Health and Human Services to provide resettlement and other services, including emergency housing and English language classes.

Facing objections from Republicans, Democrats dropped a push to avert billions of dollars in looming cuts to Medicare, farm subsidies and other programs.

Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee who is retiring next year, said he was “pleased that we have finally reached an agreement.”

But he offered a warning about the negotiations over the long-term spending bills, saying if Democrats continued to push for policies that Republicans oppose, such as lower defense funding and the elimination of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortions, “we’ll be having the same conversation in February.”

The threat to shut the government down was led by Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Roger Marshall of Kansas, who spent their time on the floor grandstanding for the Trump voter base.

“Never once has any one of us wanted to shut down government,” Lee claimed in a floor speech just before the amendment vote. “We’ve wanted to give the American worker a chance, a chance for us to vote for them, a chance for us to stand with them.”

One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said he opposed the vaccine mandate for businesses and would support overturning it in another way at another time.

The private sector vaccine requirement, which the Biden administration had set to go into effect in January, has become ensnared in court challenges anyway. In November, a federal appeals court kept a block on it in place and declared that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had overstepped its authority in issuing the rule.

Senior Republicans who objected to the vaccine mandates warned that the dispute was not worth a government shutdown, especially as the country confronts a new coronavirus variant.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, speaking on Fox News, said a shutdown “would only create chaos and uncertainty, so I don’t think that’s the best vehicle to get this job done.”

Crisis averted again. Republicans stared into the abyss, didn’t like what they saw, and stepped back from the edge.

What a way to run a country, eh?

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