House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, stepped forward Sunday with a deal with Democratic congressional leaders to extend the budget and avoid a partial government shutdown ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The extension, still pending a vote, extends spending authorizations that were set to expire at the end of this month until Dec. 20. The proposal also includes additional funding for the Secret Service and to facilitate the presidential transition.
Republican Johnson has decided to present a proposal for an extension – called a continuing resolution – without any trick measures, which would be easily acceptable to Democrats, even if the hardline wing of his party rebelled. It only includes an additional allocation of 231 million dollars to provide more resources to the Secret Service. President Joe Biden himself had asked for more funds to be able to guarantee the security of the candidates, in particular Donald Trump, who suffered an assassination attempt in Butler (Pennsylvania) in July and another incident that is being investigated as such at his golf club in Florida in the middle of this month.
Until now, Republicans have insisted on incorporating into the budget extension law, even though it has no connection to it, a measure to tighten the requirements for citizens to prove their nationality in order to vote. Although you already have to be an American to participate in the elections, the Republicans have created a spectre of massive fraud based on anecdotal cases, a conspiracy theory fuelled by Donald Trump himself, the Republican candidate for the presidency.
Trump insisted on the passage of this reform, known as the SAVE Act, which in practice threatened to prevent American citizens who do not have easy access to a passport or birth certificate from voting in a country where there is no national identity document or centralized electoral census compiled by the authorities.
“If Republicans do not get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they must not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape or form. Democrats are registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS as we speak. They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election, and should not be allowed to. Only American citizens should vote in our most important election in history, or any election!” Trump wrote on Truth, his social network this week. The previous week he had said that he was fine with the administration being shut down if that reform was not approved. The former president moves in chaos like a fish in water and believes that if things go wrong, it benefits him.
On November 5, however, not only will the president be elected, but the entire House of Representatives (435 seats) and a third of the Senate (33 out of 100) will be up for renewal. Congressmen fear that they will be blamed for the disruption of public services when the current fiscal year expires on September 30.
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Republican lawmakers, however, do not want to be seen as responsible for a partial government shutdown. “It would be politically more than stupid to do it just before the election, because we would certainly be blamed,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a few days ago.
In a letter to his Republican colleagues, Johnson says: “The comments and ideas from everyone have been very helpful, and next week the House will take the lead and pass a clean three-month continuing resolution to prevent the Senate from bogging us down with a bill loaded with billions in new spending and unrelated provisions. Our legislation will be a very limited and bare-bones continuing resolution that will include only those extensions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While it is not the solution that any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path under the current circumstances,” the House Speaker added. “As history has taught and current polls confirm, shutting down the administration less than 40 days before a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice,” he added.
“From now until Election Day, I will continue my tireless efforts and singular focus on growing our majority for the 119th Congress. It is my great honor to serve with all of you in these historic days. The future of our unique nation depends directly on our success, and I am confident that together we will prevail!” Johnson concludes his letter.
In a statement released shortly after Johnson’s new proposal was unveiled, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he was “pleased” with the outcome of the negotiations but reproached Republicans for the delay. “While I am pleased that bipartisan negotiations quickly led to a government funding agreement free of cuts and poison pills, this same agreement could have been made two weeks ago. Instead, President Johnson chose to go the MAGA route and wasted precious time. As I have said throughout this process, there is only one way to get things done: with bipartisan and bicameral support,” he said.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would consider the bill in its entirety before this week’s vote, but with the agreement, “Congress is now on a bipartisan path to avoid a government shutdown that would hurt ordinary Americans.”
Republicans and Democrats now have the next week to approve the new rule. There is a risk that some Republican congressmen, members of the party’s hardline wing, will distance themselves from their parliamentary leader’s proposal, since they systematically oppose the extension of spending. Even so, there should be no problem in approving the rule with the agreement of the congressional leaders.
The extension agreement does not mean that passing all the required budget laws by December 20 will be easy. The election results could influence political calculations if one party comes out much better than the other, potentially delaying the fight until early next year, with the risk of a partial government shutdown on Christmas Eve.
The United States has not one budget law, but a dozen, but it systematically fails to pass them in time for the start of the fiscal year on October 1. The last time it did so on time was in 1997. The usual thing is to pass this budget extension, called a continuing resolution, while the laws that authorize the expenditures of the year are being processed, which usually follow a cumbersome and complex procedure, full of amendments. When there is no agreement for the extension and the new items have not been approved, what is known as a government shutdown occurs, which implies the paralysis of some non-essential services.
