Last week, the House passed a bill that funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year without a single Democratic vote. Which tells you that there’s no way that said bill is going to pass the Senate, let alone get signed into law by President Obama, without some pretty major changes. Since nobody expects the House and Senate to agree on spending priorities in the next week, there’s going to have to be another continuing resolution to give Congress another two weeks to negotiate. Usually, a short-term continuing resolution will just continue current spending levels, because avoiding a government shutdown is seen as more important than a fight over spending priorities that will be effective for two whole weeks.
Well, the resolution that the House will consider this week doesn’t do that. Instead, the House will make about $4 billion in cuts to various programs. (We’ll see how well this goes over with Democrats—I haven’t seen any responses yet.) This resolution is scheduled to pass the House on Tuesday, and it needs to get signed into law in some form by Friday at midnight to prevent a government shutdown. We’ll see what happens….
[...] shutdown looming (although Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad does find the House’s short-term continuing resolution acceptable), you’d expect to see the Senate turning towards an appropriations bill. [...]
Pingback by S. 23, the Patent Reform bill « Goobergunch Political Report — 27 February 2011 @ 18:13 CT