Majorities support budget deal but shutdown still looms

By Jonathan Bernstein / Bloomberg Opinion

Get ready. We’re headed for a government shutdown, quite possibly a long one, probably beginning Oct. 1.

Nothing is ever certain, and it takes very little for Congress to avoid a shutdown; just a short bill extending funding after the annual spending bills expire at the end of September. But House Republicans are far too dysfunctional to produce anything like that. Right now they can’t even manage to pass their own version of spending bills, let alone something that the Democratic majority in the Senate would pass and President Biden would sign.

Extended government shutdowns — longer than a long weekend — don’t happen by accident or because good-faith negotiations don’t get done by the deadline. Extended government shutdowns only happen when the group with the votes or the leverage to make it happen want a shutdown.

Right now, the more extreme conservatives among House Republican are threatening a shutdown if they don’t get their way. It’s true that a “clean” spending extension bill that would keep the government running while negotiations continue would almost certainly pass the House and easily pass the Senate. For that matter, the bipartisan annual spending bills that the Senate is passing would also almost certainly pass in the House. But while the extremists — members of the House Freedom Caucus and others — don’t have the votes, they do have the leverage. They’re threatening to oust Kevin McCarthy from his position as speaker if he brings those bills to the House floor. McCarthy believes they’re serious and is willing to go to great lengths to appease them, whatever the costs to his party and the nation.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-majorities-support-budget-deal-but-shutdown-still-looms/