What a difference a war (and scandals, and poor response time to natural disasters, and a pitiful economic policy, and a failure to uphold the Constitution) makes:
Twelve years after conservative Republicans in Congress were blamed for shutting down the government, they are introducing legislation to ensure that government continues to function no matter what.
[snip]
It’s quite a change from 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, vowing to slash government and even abolish the Departments of Education and Energy as excessive bureaucracy.
Now conservatives say it is Democrats who want to force a government shutdown in order to coerce President Bush into accepting an additional $23 billion in spending.
"The Democrats intend to play chicken with the president because the president has said he will veto bills," said Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), chairman of the conservative Senate Republican Steering Committee. "The Democrats want to frighten Republicans in Congress and the American people."
Um..."Yay?"
I wonder how much of this comment is "I would so do this if the roles were reversed, so why shouldn't I think they'd do it?"
"It appears to many of us that the Democrats would like to have a government shutdown and blame it on the Republicans to bring about greater government spending," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of nearly 100 House conservatives. "We believe that is their purpose."
Or...maybe the Republicans don't want concede the title of "The Party of Fiscal Responsibility" to the Democrats, even though they've unofficially done that along time ago.
For their part, Democrats aren't backing this crazy bill. But they aren't planning on closing up shop either:
"The senator from South Carolina has argued that this amendment is needed so that Congress should not feel the pressure to finish appropriations bills on time," [Senator Dick] Durbin said. "He is plain wrong. If there is anything we need, it is the pressure to finish on time. If we are under that pressure, it is more likely we will respond to it."
[snippy-snip]
"We’re not going to let government shut down," he said. "I don’t want to close down the government."
"Senator DeMint certainly has a worthy goal, one we all share," Durbin said. "But the question is what levels of funding will be given."
Do we even have to ask where the White House is on this one? OK, if you insist:
"As we have in the past, the administration will continue to support Senator DeMint’s efforts to ensure government operations and services for taxpayers continue during times like we have now, when Congress fails to pass spending bills on time. In fact, the president has included a ‘Government Shutdown Prevention’ proposal in each of his budgets."
Now that that's out of the way, the next question is: Is this really a big deal? Well, yeah. Because if the bill passes as is, whatever the spending level was for last year will carry over with no change. Future Congresses can "forget" to work on the spending bills and programs that may need major adjustments wouldn't get the money that's required. This would be a good way to slowly kill certain government programs.
Or, as James Horney (Director of Federal Fiscal Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) puts it:
"The idea that we’re better off putting the government on autopilot is not a good thing. It’s not a good idea to do that because anything you set as automatic becomes the de facto starting point."