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As I reported during last night’s live blog, the Senate reached agreement on a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government, including reduced emergency funds — but without offsets — through November 18. The agreement averts for now the threat of a government shutdown. The Senate approved the CR by a vote of 79-12, and the House is expected to sign on next week.
In the end, the war was called off on a technicality. As explained in the live thread yesterday, the fact that FEMA had enough funds to make it to the end of the fiscal year – which is Friday – eliminated the need for an emergency funding request.
FEMA would still need money, but that could be handled in Fiscal Year 2012. With additional FY2011 emergency funding no longer necessary, both sides could take something off the table from the continuing resolution – the $1 billion appropriated to replenish FEMA accounts in 2011, and the offset of Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing and Department of Energy loan guarantees.
But make no mistake – this was a victory for Democrats. They preserved a key principle: no disaster relief gets offset. When a hurricane destroys someone’s house, Congress doesn’t have to kneecap someone else’s budget.
In addition, the bipartisan deal passed by the Senate includes $2.65 billion in FEMA funds appropriated for FY2012. That amount goes above the spending cap set in the debt limit deal, without offsets at all. This is less than the $5.1 billion requested by the Administration, but it’s more than halfway to the target. And since this continuing resolution to fund the government runs out on November 18, there will be other opportunities (also, only $4.6 billion of that was requested for FY2012).
Moreover, a precedent has been set now in this Congress: Republicans will accept disaster relief above the spending cap. That’s spelled out directly in the debt limit deal, and now it has been put into practice.
Republicans did not want to go near a shutdown; that much was clear. FEMA’s ability to make it through FY2011 provided the safety valve, and they ran to it. They’ll never admit it, but they wimped out. They were absolutely terrified of being blamed for causing a government shutdown.
Incidentally, this is the second straight example where Democrats refused to budge on a principle governing Congress, and Republicans caved after a spell. The other was the FAA authorization, where Republicans tried to add a policy rider to a routine authorization extension. Democrats said no, and that one actually reached the shutdown phase before Republicans capitulated. This time they didn’t even get that far.
We now know what will inspire Democrats to defend their priorities: governing norms. These are clearly important priorities to defend. If Republicans could just throw in whatever policy changes they wanted every time some authorization expired, if they could force a budget concession every time there was a natural disaster, Congress would be even more of a chaotic mess than it already is. As Harry Reid said last night in a statement. “When our fellow Americans are in crisis, we must make sure they get the aid they need without delay, not engage in a political debate.”
As I said, this continuing resolution only lasts until November 18. John Boehner must first schedule passage of this deal in the next couple days. After that, as Suzy Khimm notes, there could be a bigger fight next time.
For now, it’s clear Democrats stood strong and won this round.
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Yep, huge victory for the Democrats, winning themselves a continuing resolution for a few more weeks until the next impasse appears and the circus begins anew; party hats and noise-makers for everyone!
This is how the United States should budget, a constant series of CR’s from an adolescent, bickering Congress that keep the nation perpetually on the edge of a financial and economic abyss.
I’d like to think that the Senate Dems, having learned how to stand, might now attempt to walk. But experience tells me otherwise.
the can has been kicked down the road bc the senate gop wanted that
there is still no evidence that the senate dems can or will resist gop intransigence when push comes to shove
btw: it would be nice if obama 2.0 would weigh in on something like this, something real and that actually matters, instead of giving vapid red-meat speeches to wayward dems desperate for their hero to hate their enemies for them, oblivious to the fact that their real enemy is the hero himself
but then, obama wouldn’t be obama who only fights for show and only fights when there is nothing to win
Title:
Conclusion:
David, It’s hard to read your post when you start and finish it with assertions that clearly buy in to kabuki, especially election-cycle kabuki.
Apparently, we’re at the point where their winning elections is all that matters.
Meanwhile, Stockbrokers More Competitive, Willing To Take Risks Than Psychopaths: Study
Your argument is with the Republicans who control the House and therefore the budget planning. It used to be that budgets for the coming FY were routinely approved months in advances; then Republicans like Newt Gingrich decided to use the budget and CRs as weapons and hostages. (Remember the shutdown of 1995?)
One base is told that they have to fight in order not to lose EVERYTHING that the American people need, while the other base is told that they have to fight until they get EVERYTHING that they want.
Bottom line: Democrats and Republicans distract the electorate while the MOTU steal/privatize everything that isn’t nailed down.
Hey, Obama & Senate Democrats, thanks for doing your part in the screwing over of the American people.
Being reflexively cynical is not a substitute for knowing what one is talking about.
David’s been studying this up close for quite some time. He understands why it’s so important that offsets not be allowed as the camel’s nose under the tent. It would be important regardless of which party, Democrat, Republican or Green/Republican, did so.
After the way Wall Street has been tanking and how it tanked at the threat of an earlier shutdown, the R’s didn’t dare upset their mahsters.
We need Pelosi back in there with the gavel and fewer blue dawgs in the Senate. That’ll “make Obama do it”
Yup after that what that trader told the “shocked” BBC anchors the secret is out.
When the wolf is the shepard, the flock is nothing but meat
Republicans like it when progressives are so cynical that they give up. It means they can serve their masters’ interests more effectively. And all too often third party and Green Party activists are their handmaidens, such as with the PRT boondoggle (which is a scam to siphon dough from real public transit options, much as charter schools exist to siphon money from real public schools) as well as with the Pennsylvania Green Party.
Being reflexively cynical is not a substitute for knowing what one is talking about.
Sure enough! Phoenix Woman, I love how you get to the heart of a matter.
Can’t be repeated enough. Line of the day.
I’m going to repeat that line, with your permission, of course.
The elephant in the room, which neither party will address, is war profiteering, which has been going on for who knows how long, but most certainly could have been curtailed by Obama but wasn’t. At the risk of seeming slightly offtopic, here’s what I said last night on the unpopularity theme with reference to his influence on the direction the country has gone since he came into office:
“Since for me the persuasion NOT to ever vote for this man again came four days into the administration when he dropped the first drone, let me explain to you what others have pointed out succinctly (they, not me. Can’t claim ever to be succinct.)
Thanks to this thread of comments a pertinent argument arises that I hadn’t seen before, a tweak to the history of the Kennedy years as we usually perceive them.
We know the October confrontation with Kruschev over Cuba turned out well for us and the world in general, and that the Bay of Pigs debacle did not.
Now, juxtapose that first drone strike on Obama’s watch. Had he been a Kennedy he could have responded as Kennedy did to the Bay of Pigs (admittedly a bigger scenario but I think the point holds). Kennedy fronted up that this going along with the military ‘experts’ had been a huge mistake. I think he pulled out all the stops admitting that. And everyone agreed; huge, huge mistake.
From then on, he was in charge. We didn’t have Bay of Pigs after Bay of Pigs – as we now have had drone after drone after drone.
Obama could have done that. He didn’t.
That’s the difference between what we thought we elected and what we got.”
We have the situation with the budget that we have because of the bloated military budget and ongoing incessant warmaking. They are even planning to do their strategery for drone warfare out here in New Mexico. Just great, horrible wildfires and flash floods, and now this.
It all relates.
Democrats and the Republicans’ corporate backers and the wealthy love it when progressives are so cynical that they believe that third parties on the left are per se counterproductive and thus reflexively support an ideologically center-right party. What third parties has to do with this is beyond me.
That said, otherwise I agree with you, excellent post by David.
All too often Democrats are the republicans’ co-conspirators (cf: the Obama administration). Moral of the story: being reflexively anti-third-party is not a substitute for knowing what one is talking about, either.
One half of the American people is shouting at the other half over distractions while we’re all getting screwed over.
What David has done in this article is wrap his research in an either/or fallacy.
I’m with you Justin B. You can’t argue with facts but you can argue with how facts are being interpreted.
Politicians don’t pay attention to polite, educated, reasonable people who will vote for them because they are the best of the alternatives.
They will only pay attention when they feel they have something to lose.
As they say on Wall Street…no risk, no gain.
I am not for cheering the Democrats for giving us nothing, next-to-nothing, and/or token victories. I’d rather watch sellouts and DINOs lose elections than watch them give us bad policy and a few fake victories during election years.
If the Democratic Party’s leadership can’t be fixed, then a third party is the only remaining option.
Elsewhere on the net I’m not seeing what you’re saying. The original issue was about supplemental spending, which the other day you had posted that supplemental spending could be above $11B without offsets, but this new deal is for 2012 regular appropriations (not supplemental):
After weeks of protesting that federal disaster aid programs need billions of dollars in new appropriations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his caucus agreed to language that doesn’t include supplemental funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and essentially matches House-approved language.
The spending bill that finally passed the Senate includes just $2.65 billion for FEMA, money that comes from its regular fiscal 2012 appropriation. That’s the same level of funding included in the legislation approved by the GOP-dominated House, which won only six Democratic votes in the lower chamber and is a far cry from the $6.9 billion in additional funds Senate Democrats were pushing for less than two weeks ago.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/184073-spending-deal-amounts-to-gop-victory-on-disaster-spending
As far as I can tell paying for 2012 regular appropriations falls on the Catfood Commission II and they could raise the Medicare age to pay for the 2012 FEMA regular budget or any number of things (though in this case the Democrats are actually agreeing to give FEMA a smaller budget this year than last year, so the reduced budget itself takes care of needing offsets).
Third party movements in the U.S. have proven to be unsuccessful in the past. Is there any evidence that this time around would be any different?
You’re right. The past is the only measure of success or failure of any political movement. There’s no way to challenge the faux two-party system that currently dominates American politics. Whether the Democrats “win” or the Republicans “win,” the American people lose. There never will be again in this country a party that will represent the interests of the American people and the common good. The corporations have won. The end.
There are many reasons third-party movements have been unsuccessful in the U.S. in the past, one of which is that people focus on the third-party rather than reforms necessary to make them viable.
That a third-party will likely not succeed in 2012 isn’t an indication that one should simply accept the status quo and vote either ‘R’ or ‘D’.
My original point is that FDL should not ever feed the narrative that Democrats think of themselves as winnning a round when they get some little thing – anything – for the American people.
Democrats have reduced themselves to those who know they’ve sold out and to the few who still deceive themselves into believing that the Democratic Party hasn’t sold out, even though it has.
Should we be cheering when they pull off a kabuki maneuver when the only point of the performance is to trick people into voting for candidates with “D” after their names on the ballots?
When Kucinich caved, he returned our pennies in anticipation of millions rolling in from his new sponsors (or is it that he just wanted to stop the millions from being spent against him?).
The title is:
What principles? The ones in the Party Platform? Joke.
This is getting ridiculous. First, Congress was threatening to shut down the government over a spending cut worth 0.04% of the federal budget (http://eng.am/pbsfB3). Now they seem to be trying to fund the government on a weekly basis. This dysfunction is not good for our economy or country.
It took me a bit to figure out your logic, but I finally got it:
When the game is called on account of rain, the home team is the automatic winner.
Doesn’t do much for our credit rating, either.
Oh, I agree with you almost completely, Knox. I think we have to assess things as they are: Democrats are marginally better than Republicans on some issues, and almost identical on almost all others. This makes Democrat X a better choice than Republican Y in a generic contest. Our two-party system currently reinforces this morton’s fork of a ‘choice’ at election time in almost all contests, so that ultimately, under the current paradigm (and there isn’t, I think, enough time between now and November 2012 to change this) we’re left with three ‘options’: 1) vote R, 2) vote D, 3) vote for a candidate who is not going to win the contest (i.e. throw away one’s vote).
Personally, I’m going to try to get a much less candidate- or party-specific “don’t vote R, don’t vote D” campaign going. At this point I think it’s more important to try to accomplish two things: first, get people accustomed to voting for a non-mainstream candidate and second, make candidates in both parties take notice. It’s going to be a losing proposition the first few election cycles. Coupled, however, with a rigorous movement to reform campaign finance and our system of elections, eventually it can bear fruit.
“make candidates in both parties take notice.”
Yes: both sides (and especially the losing side) look at the voters that went 3rd Party and ask themselves, “what must I do to get those people on my side”?