The way the game of chicken endgame over keeping the government open looks to me now, since money bills must originate in the House, is this:
1) The House D’s will reject* Squeaker Johnson’s divide and rule trap Continuing Resolution (CR), which as the the comment by tjlord on McJoan’s diary today noted, would allow the GOP to fund the military and other programs they like (or are afraid to defund) in January, and then butcher programs good for the working class and non-rich in February. *Unless the Gottheimer Gang does the dirty work for Norquist and Bannon who want to demolish the New Deal welfare state.
2) The House R’s will try to pass the Squeaker’s CR with votes of ch!ckensh!t “moderates” w/o 3 RWNJs.
3) The Senate will pass a bipartisan, clean, undivided CR, maybe also with $ for Ukraine and Israel. The previous CR passed on Sept. 30 continued funding at FY 2003 dollar levels, ie real cuts because of inflation. A clean undivided House CR matching the Senate’s would just pass without a conference committee and be signed by Biden, but that would require Democratic votes in the House.
4) IF the House does pass a CR not both clean and undivided, it will go to a Conference Committee, which will need a majority of conferees from each house to approve a report. By precedent, conference committees include Chairs of the committees of jurisdiction.
5) If the conferees agree on a report, it would go to both houses unamended for an up or down vote, and be passed like the previous CR by a bipartisan majority, w/o the MAGA extremists.
6) Biden would sign a clean CR as soon as it reaches his desk, which would prevent a shutdown if it is signed by around 6 AM EST Monday Nov 20.
7) In any case, we good citizens need to launch a FIRESTORM OF ANGRY CALLS to Republican congressmembers beginning now, especially the 18 House Rs elected from Districts that voted for Biden in 2020, but also GOP Senators running for re-election. Let them know how we feel about their use of blackmail tactics to threaten vital public services, and their votes for an inexperianced far-right extremist speaker. Tell them that we are increasing our efforts to register new voters.
My question is this — will the conference committees (especially the House) include conferees from the House minority Democrats? Jodey Arrington, the GOP Chair of the House Budget Committee voted to pass the previous CR September 30.
If there are House D’s on a conference committee in fair proportion (ie one less than Rs) then the House could pass Squeaker Johnson’s trap divided CR bill, Arrington and House Ds in the Conf Comm could replace it with the Senate’s clean unified CR, which would pass both houses, postponing the shutdown showdown for a few months.
