The countdown is on. At midnight on Saturday, Joe Biden’s Government will run out of funds to cover the Administration’s non-essential public services, unless Congress prevents it. The Washington Capitol is experiencing a hectic autumn Saturday in which, almost in desperation, the president of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, has announced an extension proposal to keep the Government open for 45 days, but leaving aside aid to Ukraine, which divides the Republican Party. There are still doubts about its viability. The proposal will be voted on this Saturday in plenary, but by a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority and puts the Republican leader’s own position at risk.
McCarthy is seeking the support of Democrats, since the hard wing of his party has refused any type of extension. He points out that the approval of aid to Ukraine should follow another path. “Yesterday I spoke with Hakeem [Jeffries, líder de la minoría demócrata en la Cámara de Representantes]. I spoke with several Democrats. “They maintain the point of view that they want to include Ukraine as well,” he said this Saturday.. He is aware that he would lose the support of a large part of his people if he included in the extension new aid to Ukraine, which the majority of Republican representatives have opposed in other votes held this week.
“We are going to do our job. “We are going to be adults in the room and we are going to keep the Government open,” McCarthy said. “We are presenting something that will allow us to continue paying our troops. And if Biden wants to push against it and tell the Democrats to vote against it, then the closure is his thing,” he said. The Republican leader considers that it is not necessary to extend aid to Ukraine in the extension because there is a remainder of 3 billion dollars. Yes, new emergency relief funds would be included to deal with disasters in Hawaii, California, Florida and other states.
Today → The House will vote on a short-term, stop-gap bill that will keep government open and provide disaster relief for Americans from Florida to Hawaii. Nothing more. Nothing less. pic.twitter.com/xNtfgY6QCZ
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) September 30, 2023
The new step reflects a break with the Republican hardline after the failure of his extension proposal on Friday, which included 30% cuts in most federal agencies and new security measures for the border. The Democrats rejected the proposal (due to the cuts) along with 21 radical Republicans who do not want to grant an extension of any kind. “I tried yesterday with the most conservative interim financing bill that could be found, which secured the border, which cuts spending, and I couldn’t get 218 Republicans (…). But what I ask of Republicans and Democrats alike is that they put their partisanship aside,” the Republican leader said this Saturday.
He knows that the radical Republicans are willing to ask for his head for supporting the Democrats, but McCarthy has shown himself willing to risk his position: “If I have to risk losing my job to stand up for the American people, I agree.” , said the president of the House of Representatives in a brief appearance. “If someone wants to fire me for putting Americans first, so be it,” he later insisted in the hallways. Meanwhile, Matt Gaetz, leader of the rebels, has said about the new proposal: “It is a surrender.”
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The president of the Lower House has always been in favor of avoiding the partial closure of the Administration, but his own extension proposals have clashed time and again with the radical minority of his party. He now opts for an alternative that could trigger a motion of censure or impeachment raised by members of his own group. In that case, his fate would be in the hands of the Democratic congressmen, whose first impulse would be to remove him. Even if they decide to save him, he would be disowned by part of his people, in this kind of Rubik’s cube in which the pieces do not quite fit together.
The Senate, for its part, is working on its own 30-day budget extension bill with the support of senators from both parties. Even if it is approved in the Senate, it is very difficult, however, for it to achieve the necessary support of the House of Representatives, with a Republican majority, as it plans to include an additional $6 billion in aid to Ukraine.
The big difference between the two proposals, therefore, is Ukraine. But McCarthy passes the ball to Joe Biden and the Democrats with his initiative. If they reject the extension, Republicans will be able to hold him responsible for shutting down the Government. One of the radicals, Marjorie Taylor Greene, accused Biden this Saturday of treating Ukraine as if it were the 51st state. “Democrats are willing to shut down our government if we don’t fund Ukraine,” she said. “For Democrats it is Ukraine first and the United States last,” she insisted.
Democrats controlled both chambers in the first half of Biden’s term, so they were able to pass, with some delay, the 2021 and 2022 budget bills. In January of this year, however, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives by a narrow margin (222 to 213 seats). That, in addition, placed around twenty Trumpist radicals in a position of strength, who made McCarthy sweat to be elected.
The radicals consider that their parliamentary leader betrayed them by agreeing with Biden to suspend the debt ceiling for two years without demanding drastic spending cuts. That agreement implied the approval of the budget laws for the new fiscal year, but the Republicans, under pressure from extremists, now refuse to comply with it.
Even if there is an extension, the work of definitively approving the spending items for the new fiscal year would still remain ahead. With a House of Representatives with a Republican majority and a Senate controlled by Democrats, only an agreement between both parties can allow the budget laws to be approved. Political polarization, however, keeps the two parties in diametrically opposed positions.
The United States does not have one budget law but a dozen. Each year, Congress must approve, with a majority of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, 12 appropriation laws for the different departments of the Government. The last time it did so on time was in 1997. This Sunday, October 1, a fiscal year begins and Congress has not passed a single one of those laws.
The tortuous election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the year predicted a dysfunctional and problematic legislature, with Congress hostage to a radical minority of the Republican Party that McCarthy is now trying to shake off to avoid the partial closure of the Administration .
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