We're five working days away from a potential government shutdown and nowhere nearer a solution from Republican leadership to avoid it. In fact, it's looking more and more like an inevitability. There are at least
five factors that point toward House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being powerless to stop it as laid out in this
Washington Post article.
The first, and most frustrating to an outside observer, is time. It's not like this end of the fiscal year thing snuck up on anyone and it's not like it hasn't been clear for months that maybe some effort should be put into finding a responsible course—like working with Democrats to make sure there were enough votes to put down a GOP rebellion. So again, five working days away from the end, and what are they doing? The House will be using part of the week to name post offices and the Senate wasting at least one day, quite probably more, on an unconstitutional 20-week abortion ban. Given McConnell's strategy of late, the Senate will probably be revoting that one for the next year.
Then there are the four presidential candidates in the Senate all angling to move up in the polls and steal some of Donald Trump's and Carly Fiorina's spotlight. With Rand Paul and Ted Cruz both experts at mucking things up, it's a big obstacle for McConnell. One or two times in the past, he's been able to stave them off by having the presiding officer on the floor and the rest of the Republicans just pretend like they aren't there making their objections. But even if McConnell can figure out how to prevent floor mischief from his guys, there's not much he can do about Boehner's out of control House, which is factor number three.
3. Conservatives don’t trust leadership. When Republicans took control of the Senate in January, Boehner and McConnell promised they would overhaul the way Washington does business.
Now that's a problem created by craven politics and just plain old stupidity combined. Leadership made promises that they knew were impossible to deliver—repealing Obamacare, slashing spending, passing spending bills with all sorts of riders that would roll back President Obama's executive policies. The House hardliners took those promises as gospel, or are at least pretending that they did in order to pressure leadership. All to appeal to the increasingly narrow and extreme Republican voter base who mostly only cares about stopping Obama from presidenting.
The fourth and fifth factors pretty much stem from that one—blocking all things Obama at all costs. The hardliners want to get a spending policy victory any way they can and if that means shutdown—or several weeks from now hijacking the debt ceiling hike, they'll do it. Because the ultimate goal is sticking their thumb in President Obama's eye. As usual. That means making him veto stuff, beginning with a Planned Parenthood defunding and ending with an Obamacare defunding with a whole lot of stuff in between. Because forcing Obama to veto stuff means . . . they win? Refer back to number three, in particular the stupid part.
Sign if you agree: Democrats must stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood. No government shutdowns