Ladies and Gentlemen, live from the fabulous Washington DC Capitol, Lets get reeeeeeeeeeady to ruuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmbleeeeee! Tonight’s bout is for the undisputed budget heavyweight championship of the United States. In this corner, wearing red Trunks with little white flags on them, please welcome “Stumblin” Percy Pachyderm! And in this corner, wearing the righteous blue trunks, please welcome Donnie “Kickin’ Ass” Donkey! The bout will be an unlimited of voting rounds until we have a winner. * DING! *
Not to brag, but I told you this was going to happen. Once the healthcare fight from hell got into mid June, I opined that it had become the only part of the GOP agenda (if you can call it that anymore) that would be tackled in Trump’s first year. For the simple reason that once congress comes back from their August recess, especially this congress, there are just too many legislative “honey-do’s” on the calendar to allow them to go off into the weeds on legislative scavenger hunts. Things like Hollywood turf wars over a new budget, or another Continuing Resolution in lieu of an actual budget, and raising the debt ceiling, piddly little nuts and bolts stuff like that which must be done.
Well, Ryan is trying to get an early start on his fall cleaning. Normally, this would have been widely reported on, but with Reince Priebus getting the “pie-in-the-face” treatment from Trump and the Mooch, the networks were busy. But yesterday, in a 235-192 vote, the House passed a $788B budget for next year. This latest feat of mathematical legerdemain is already in trouble in the light of day. It has both a short con and a hide-the-pea-in-the-shell game in it at the same time.
back in the good old days, when Congress could concentrate on its job for more than five lttle minutes without another brain dead tweet, or a new American Comrade revelation, things were different. Each committee sat down and hammered out a budget for the departments they saw over. All of these bills were jammed together into one massive Omnibus Bill, which nobody knew what the hell was in it because staffers wouldn’t touch it for fear of getting a hernia. One bill was voted on, which saved time. But this congress can’t even lace up a pair of sandals, so we play a game of fiduciary “Where’s Waldo” instead.
The pea in the shell game is the fact that the bill provided $1.2B in funding as a down payment on His Lowness’ moronic border wall. The Democrats are furious because Eddie Munster snuck the border wall in on a procedural vote, denying the Democrats a straight up or down vote on the measure. The Democrats are right to be highly pissed, they might well have won that vote, since border state legislators, swing district legislators, and GOP legislators with large Hispanic populations generally tend to oppose the wall. Fighting this would have given them a deliverable to bring home to their constituents, so Ryan had to put a floppy hat and a false beard on it to get it in, and screw his own caucus along with the Democrats.
The short con is their defense spending sleight of hand. Because they’re ignoring the slashing cuts in Trump’s proposed budget to social and non defense programs, They are giving him a $60B increase in defense spending, $30B above what his budget called for. The GOP members are already pounding their chests, bragging about giving our brave service members “certainty”, especially with the procurement of shiny new toys that the Pentagon didn’t ask for, and doesn’t want. Who knows, maybe Trumpelthinskin will be able to knock another bottle of Moet against the bow of another big metal boat for the cameras. A real chickenhawk’s wet dream, right?
Here’s the con. They can’t follow through on it, or sustain it. Back in 2011, the GOP congress passed a little legislative gem called “sequestration”, in which they tried to reign in the fiscal madness enough to ensure that there would still be a few bob left in the national purse for the occasional Rose Garden kegger when they had a symbolic victory. They’re passing the huge increase under the umbrella of a two year sequestration “pause”. But that two year bill expires on September 30th of this year. Unless it is extended, which is highly unlikely without reciprocal extensions to social programs, the over bloated defense increase that they’re tacking on this year will lead to an automatic 13% across the entire defense spending budget next year. So much for all of that morale building “certainty”, huh Paul?
This is unlikely to get to the floor of the Senate before the August recess, even if the House manages a final vote before the break. Which means that the Senate will have something like 16 working days to get this done by the budget deadline. And unless they cave on the border wall money, it ain’t gonna happen. This ain’t a reconciliation bill, the Democrats can filibuster the shit out of it, and they will. This is what happens when you lose the first battle of the war, it makes it incredibly hard to stabilize your line so you can go back on the offensive again. Unless the GOP congress moves with a speed and purpose they haven’t shown to date, and which I personally think they are incapable of, they will piss away about 12 of those 16 days trying to ram this through, setting up yet another last minute CR battle to avoid a GOP owned shutdown. And riding high on their healthcare victory, you can only imagine that the CR they finally hammer out with Ryan and McConnell will send El Rushbo into another mouth foaming, purple cheeked frenzy of rage. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that pesky little thing called the debt ceiling boys and girls.
Anybody tho thought that we had already seen the climax of this movie with the titanic healthcare battle was sadly mistaken. The GOP dominated congress is reeling, after the bitter defeat of Obamacare repeal, they are demoralized and fighting with each other more than the Democrats. This is not a recipe for a blue ribbon winning legislative cake. On January 20th, we all despaired at the incredible damage the GOP could do with their horrible agenda. But, if Chuck and Nancy play their cards right, and keep their hole card hidden until the end, we could end up with the heretofore unthinkable scenario of the Democrats managing to get more of their agenda wish list enacted that the Republicans do. Winning has a funny way of emboldening you, let’s keep the pressure up, and stockpile our ammo for 2018,