After
weeks of refusing to acknowledge Senate Democrats' requests for budget negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has finally agreed to talk to them. He's also making a very big promise that he's very unlikely to be able to deliver:
no government shutdown on his watch.
The Kentucky Republican hasn’t told colleagues of his endgame plans, but they suspect he is angling for a yearlong spending measure that would allow him to sidestep a fight over busting the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
“Whatever minimizes the drama, because Mitch is not a big fan of drama,” said a Republican senator who requested anonymity.
A short-term continuing resolution keeping the government open through the end of the year is expected in September. […]
The budget endgame is complicated by a clamor from the GOP base in recent days to defund Planned Parenthood following the release of a series of covert videos that show officials at the organization discussing the cost of fetal tissue. Presidential politics will be a major problem for McConnell this fall, as the candidates will be wooing the base to win the GOP nomination. […]
McConnell and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will also have to figure out a way to extend the Highway Trust Fund and raise the debt limit.
That short-term resolution and the highway funding will have to happen in a very short September, which doesn't start until after Labor Day on September 8 and will be shortened by the Pope's visit and Jewish holidays. There'll be something like a dozen work days to get all this done. He'll have to convince Rand Paul and Ted Cruz to not use those few days for grandstanding. Boehner will have to control his problem children, or just do a bill with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democrats, to make it happen. That's all supposed to happen just in September.
Imagining that McConnell manages all that he still has to contend with a fight with Senate Democrats and President Obama over defense spending and the padding of that budget with "emergency" appropriations going into the still existing Iraq and Afghanistan contingency fund. If there's going to be a defense spending increase, Democrats want it to be on the books and they want a similar increase in domestic spending. Obama has threatened a veto if Republicans insist on using the budget trick of padding the contingency fund. That's a significant obstacle for McConnell to negotiate with his own defense hawks and deficit peacocks.
Given the number of leadership fails McConnell has experienced in just the first seven months of his tenure, it's pretty much impossible to imagine he'll glide through the next five without a major breakdown. If he didn't have four presidential candidates in his conference, maybe he could pull it off. But with Ted Cruz running a campaign centered on his feud with McConnell, there's no way.