It won’t get any better: Washington faces another looming government shutdown
It’s not going to get any better.The government closed down for a record 43 days this fall. And if you thought you’d seen the worst of Congress, it truly won’t...
By Fox News · Fox News
It’s not going to get any better. The government closed down for a record 43 days this fall. And if you thought you’d seen the worst of Congress, it truly won’t get any better when the majority of the federal government could shut down in the wee hours of January 31st. That’s right. Lawmakers have yet to address the very issues which sparked this year’s astonishing shutdown. Some of those are legislative. Some are policy related. And the biggest problems are political. Frankly, the political ones may be the most challenging. Let’s start with the most obvious ways to extinguish a wintertime crisis in Washington. SHUTDOWN IS OVER, BUT WASHINGTON'S BUDGET BRAWL IS JUST GETTING STARTED Included in the interim bill to reopen the government were three bills to fund major sections of the federal government through September 30, 2027 – the end of the current fiscal year. Congress adopted three of the 12 appropriations bills which run the government every year. Those are Legislative Branch for Congress, Military Construction/VA for military building programs, and the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Agriculture. Even though that’s three of the 12 annual spending bills, it’s not anywhere close to a "quarter" of all spending which Congress appropriates annually. More than half of all Congressionally-controlled spending goes to the Pentagon alone . So the House and Senate must pass all nine of the remaining nine annual bills in order to avoid a repeat of this fall at 12:00:01 on Saturday, January 31. That is a tall order. But leading appropriators from both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol say there’s been marked progress on these bills. Still, syncing everything up in a little more than two months – with Congress now out of session again this week and slated to be out for Christmas and New Year’s – strikes some as doom date with destiny. Keep in mind that Congress did not stay in session in late July and August to tackle some of those same…