Morons:
With President Donald Trump and GOP leaders distracted by other issues, Congress is on the verge of bungling its way into a shutdown of federal agencies in less than three weeks.
Trump and his advisers, particularly Elon Musk, have devoted the first month in office to trying to rip apart federal agencies that they don’t like while also upending traditional foreign policy alliances. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) have battled over how fast to move all of Trump’s agenda, including at least $4.5 trillion in tax cuts at a time when the national debt is ballooning.
But those issues are likely to take months to fully negotiate and navigate through complex procedures. The most pressing problem — keeping the federal government open past the March 14 deadline — has been virtually ignored by top leaders.
And unlike the most recent shutdown deadlines, the politics of the moment are not aligned to bring the two parties together with an obvious last-minute deal that simply adds more money for each side’s favored projects.
Instead, many Democrats have grown so livid about Trump and Musk’s dismantling of agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development — ignoring laws approved by Congress and signed by previous presidents — that many Democrats say they will oppose a new round of government funding without guarantees that Trump and Musk will abide by these laws.
In outlining what they are seeking, Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, summed it up thus on Thursday: “Simply an assurance that, if there’s going to be Democratic votes, that the president and Elon Musk will follow the law and they won’t just take our bill that we worked really hard on and rip it up.”
With President Donald Trump and GOP leaders distracted by other issues, Congress is on the verge of bungling its way into a shutdown of federal agencies in less than three weeks.
Trump and his advisers, particularly Elon Musk, have devoted the first month in office to trying to rip apart federal agencies that they don’t like while also upending traditional foreign policy alliances. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) have battled over how fast to move all of Trump’s agenda, including at least $4.5 trillion in tax cuts at a time when the national debt is ballooning.
But those issues are likely to take months to fully negotiate and navigate through complex procedures. The most pressing problem — keeping the federal government open past the March 14 deadline — has been virtually ignored by top leaders.
And unlike the most recent shutdown deadlines, the politics of the moment are not aligned to bring the two parties together with an obvious last-minute deal that simply adds more money for each side’s favored projects.
Instead, many Democrats have grown so livid about Trump and Musk’s dismantling of agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development — ignoring laws approved by Congress and signed by previous presidents — that many Democrats say they will oppose a new round of government funding without guarantees that Trump and Musk will abide by these laws.
In outlining what they are seeking, Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, summed it up thus on Thursday: “Simply an assurance that, if there’s going to be Democratic votes, that the president and Elon Musk will follow the law and they won’t just take our bill that we worked really hard on and rip it up.”
