New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s first major legislative proposal is strangely similar to the one that cost his predecessor Kevin McCarthy his head. With the support of Republican and Democratic members of Congress, the House of Representatives approved this Tuesday a double budget extension that would allow avoiding the partial government shutdown. The previous extension expired at midnight this Friday, November 17th. Now everything is left for the time after the Christmas holidays.
The new budget extension was rejected by the hard wing of the Republican Party itself because it does not provide for any new cuts. What the law excludes, however, is aid to Ukraine and Israel, as other parliamentary initiatives in this regard are being processed in Congress. Aid to Ukraine divides Republicans even further, so ignoring it did not result in further dissenting votes in their ranks.
The result was 336 yes votes and 95 no votes, significantly exceeding the two-thirds threshold required for fast-track approval of such an initiative. Of the yes votes, 209 came from Democrats and 127 from Republicans. A total of 93 Republican members of Congress and four Democrats spoke out against it. The regulation met with more opposition from Republicans than the one that cost the previous speaker his job. At that time, Johnson voted against the extension. Now he’s the one who suggested it.
McCarthy followed the same strategy and left out aid to Ukraine. But hardline Republicans have not forgiven him for saving Joe Biden from shutting down non-essential government services. McCarthy said he was willing to avoid this crisis even if it cost him his job. And that was exactly the price that had to be paid. Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz introduced a no-confidence motion that passed with the votes of Democrats and eight hardline Republican congressmen.
After several weeks of chaos, paralysis, contradictory vetoes and internal confrontations, Mike Johnson, a radical evangelical Christian, election denier and Donald Trump loyalist, was elected as the new President of the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, when the worst comes to the worst, the Republicans have returned to the starting point: a budget extension that the most conservative members of their group do not like and which has found more Democratic than Republican support. The most radical prefer to force a partial government shutdown and use it as a negotiating weapon to demand cuts in public spending. These so-called government shutdowns are unpopular because soldiers and federal employees are no longer receiving their salaries and many programs are being suspended.
Republican hardliners in Congress, members of the so-called Freedom Caucus or Freedom Group, expressed anger in a statement that the extension “includes no spending cuts, no border security, not a single meaningful victory for the American people.” And although they contain a warning to Johnson, given what has happened with McCarthy’s firing, there does not appear to be any intent to trigger a new crisis in the House of Representatives: “While we remain committed to working with President Johnson, we need a bold one “Step.” change,” they simply emphasize.
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All this on a somewhat surreal day at the Capitol, where a Republican congressman, Tim Burchett, spent the day denouncing an attack, an elbow to the kidney or back, inflicted on him by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had. who denies the facts. Burchett is one of eight Republicans who voted to remove the previous speaker. And as if that weren’t enough, a Republican senator, Markwayne Mullin, challenged truckers’ association president Sean M. O’Brien to a physical altercation during a Senate hearing.
There was greater understanding when the budget extension was approved. The rule still needs to be voted on by the Senate and signed by Biden, but everything seems to indicate that it will have free rein, marking another repeat of what happened in late September, when the government shutdown seemed almost certain to be extended agreed at the last moment. The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has already announced his support.
In reality, the adopted legislation provides for a double extension. The budget runs until January 19th for some of the programs and February 2nd for another part. The United States has not just one budget bill, but a dozen, but is fundamentally unable to pass them in time for the start of the fiscal year on October 1st. Typically, a budget extension, called a standing resolution, is approved while legislation authorizing the year’s spending is being processed, which usually follows a cumbersome and complex process full of amendments.
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