Over the weekend, House Republicans bowed to pressure from their teahadist base by passing a spending bill that would cut $61.5 billion from the federal budget through the final seven months of this fiscal year. But even before the bill passed, Republicans were acknowledging that it was dead on arrival.
On Friday, House Speaker John Boehner shifted emphasis from his earlier comments threatening a government shutdown to recognizing that a stop-gap funding measure would be necessary to keep government open. Boehner continued to insist that any short-term measure include spending cuts, but it would be unrealistic for him to expect any sort of meaningful cuts to be implemented before negotiations are complete.
On Sunday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan also acknowledged the House-passed bill would not become law:
House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) acknowledged the obvious on Sunday: The resolution he and his colleagues passed Saturday morning to keep the government funded would not survive the Senate in its current form.
But in gaming out how Congress will negotiate a continuing resolution before the current one runs out on March 4, the Wisconsin Republican provided some telling hints. GOP leadership, he said, would accept a short-term extension of funds to keep the government running while negotiations with the Senate on a long-term deal continued. Those funds, however, could not be at the same level as the current continuing resolution; they'd have to contain cuts.
Although both Boehner and Ryan seem to want to inch away from a standoff guaranteed to result in a government shutdown, they are clearly scared to death of their teahadist base. As a result, their essential position remains untenable. While they are proposing negotiations between Republicans and Democrats, they are placing an absurd condition on those negotiations, insisting that Democrats agree to the GOP's basic demands before talks even begin.
If Republicans really want to avoid a shutdown, what they need to do is move towards the stop-gap funding compromise offered by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday. Her proposal would avert a government shutdown by freezing spending at current levels through March 31. As things now stand, government will shut down on March 4 without a long-term spending deal in place. Pelosi's measure would extend that date to March 31 while freezing current spending levels during negotiations.
Absent Pelosi's proposal or a long-term deal, the government will shut down on March 4. Both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have ruled out supporting the House-passed plan because it would threaten economic recovery and slash critical national priorities, but there is also Republican opposition. On Sunday, for example, Republican Senator Dick Lugar came out against the House Republican bill.