Congress has almost completed the first step in the arduous job assigned to them in the debt ceiling deal President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck last month. As a reward, they’re taking off now until mid-July, because who doesn’t take nearly three weeks to celebrate Independence Day? They’ll need that time to get themselves mentally prepared, because the part they just did was the easy bit. What’s ahead is going to be really messy.
This past week, the Senate Appropriations Committee established the funding levels for all of the federal government departments for next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. To be precise, the Democrats on the committee set those numbers. While Chairman Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and ranking member Sen. Susan Collins, Maine, worked together and said nice things about each other, Republicans on the committee unanimously voted against it.
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The committee strictly adhered to the recent debt ceiling agreement: total funding at $1.59 trillion, with $886.3 billion going toward defense and $703.7 billion for domestic programs. “The challenges we face under the limits imposed by the debt ceiling deal do not get any easier and they don’t get any better if we start going backwards, or if we abandon our return to regular order, or we write unserious bills,” Murray said, pointedly warning Republicans against breaking the deal, which of course they are trying to do.
“Due to the inadequacy of funding for Homeland Security and the need for additional defense funding, unfortunately, I cannot support the … allocations,” Collins said, speaking for the Republicans.
That’s just the Senate side. Then there’s the problem child House, where a tiny majority representing one-half (the House) of one-third (the Congress) of the government can shut down the whole shebang with a tantrum. And that’s exactly where we might be headed as House Republicans are already reneging on the deal and moving domestic spending bills that are well below the agreement, thanks to the Freedom Caucus and McCarthy’s weakness in giving in to them. That’s setting up not just a House-Senate battle, but a House GOP versus Senate GOP fight, especially for additional, emergency funding to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion. McCarthy’s ruled that out, picking a fight with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Beyond slashing programs willy-nilly, House Republicans are also adding a bunch of culture war poison pills into their appropriations bills, fighting what they insist is “wokeness” in the government. Like . . . keeping the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes? Yes, that is a thing they’re trying to do. Nothing like lung cancer to fight the woke.
That’s not all though. House Republicans are fighting each other over spending. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t trust McCarthy and leadership to cut as deeply as they want and are threatening to shut the government down to spite their own colleagues. That includes Florida Man Matt Gaetz who has as a mission completely defunding the Veterans Administration.
We’re going to need number jerseys to sort out the battle to come: House vs. Senate; House GOP vs. Senate GOP; House GOP vs. House GOP. Bottom line, it would take a miracle to get out of this mess without a government shutdown. Just in time for the 2024 election campaign to kick into gear.
Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel, the first member of Congress to appear on the show! Nickel gives us the blow-by-blow of his unlikely victory that saw him flip an extremely competitive seat from red to blue last year, including how he adjusted when a new map gave him a very different district and why highlighting the extremism of his MAGA-flavored opponent was key to his success. A true election nerd, Nickel tells us which precincts he was tracking on election night that let him know he was going to win—and which fellow House freshman is the one you want to rock out with at a concert.
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This past week, the Senate Appropriations Committee established the funding levels for all of the federal government departments for next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. To be precise, the Democrats on the committee set those numbers. While Chairman Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and ranking member Sen. Susan Collins, Maine, worked together and said nice things about each other, Republicans on the committee unanimously voted against it.
Campaign Action
The committee strictly adhered to the recent debt ceiling agreement: total funding at $1.59 trillion, with $886.3 billion going toward defense and $703.7 billion for domestic programs. “The challenges we face under the limits imposed by the debt ceiling deal do not get any easier and they don’t get any better if we start going backwards, or if we abandon our return to regular order, or we write unserious bills,” Murray said, pointedly warning Republicans against breaking the deal, which of course they are trying to do.
“Due to the inadequacy of funding for Homeland Security and the need for additional defense funding, unfortunately, I cannot support the … allocations,” Collins said, speaking for the Republicans.
That’s just the Senate side. Then there’s the problem child House, where a tiny majority representing one-half (the House) of one-third (the Congress) of the government can shut down the whole shebang with a tantrum. And that’s exactly where we might be headed as House Republicans are already reneging on the deal and moving domestic spending bills that are well below the agreement, thanks to the Freedom Caucus and McCarthy’s weakness in giving in to them. That’s setting up not just a House-Senate battle, but a House GOP versus Senate GOP fight, especially for additional, emergency funding to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion. McCarthy’s ruled that out, picking a fight with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Beyond slashing programs willy-nilly, House Republicans are also adding a bunch of culture war poison pills into their appropriations bills, fighting what they insist is “wokeness” in the government. Like . . . keeping the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes? Yes, that is a thing they’re trying to do. Nothing like lung cancer to fight the woke.
That’s not all though. House Republicans are fighting each other over spending. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t trust McCarthy and leadership to cut as deeply as they want and are threatening to shut the government down to spite their own colleagues. That includes Florida Man Matt Gaetz who has as a mission completely defunding the Veterans Administration.
We’re going to need number jerseys to sort out the battle to come: House vs. Senate; House GOP vs. Senate GOP; House GOP vs. House GOP. Bottom line, it would take a miracle to get out of this mess without a government shutdown. Just in time for the 2024 election campaign to kick into gear.
Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel, the first member of Congress to appear on the show! Nickel gives us the blow-by-blow of his unlikely victory that saw him flip an extremely competitive seat from red to blue last year, including how he adjusted when a new map gave him a very different district and why highlighting the extremism of his MAGA-flavored opponent was key to his success. A true election nerd, Nickel tells us which precincts he was tracking on election night that let him know he was going to win—and which fellow House freshman is the one you want to rock out with at a concert.
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