The tax cuts bill Republicans are hell bent on passing today could add as much as $2 trillion—$2 TRILLION—to the deficit. They're all on board with that, because unicorns and pixie dust are going to make it all okay and keep their jobs safe next November so they can steal whatever is left after this bill. But what they're not onboard with his actually making government work and doing it by spending money to, you know, help people. That's going to be a fight for them. Because they are a lethal combination of ignorant, greedy, and cruel.
Speaker Paul Ryan plans to pass a continuing resolution later this week to fund the government until Jan. 19, but there are major disagreements within the House GOP over the move. There are also disputes between House and Senate Republicans, as well as the ever-present struggle with Democrats.
Right now, no one on either side of the Capitol has any clear idea how this three-way funding fight will play out, but all the major factions are digging in. Lawmakers and aides said the House and Senate could end up "ping-ponging" a spending bill back and forth until the issues are resolved, although some worry that Congress could blunder into a shutdown. Ryan on Tuesday instructed lawmakers not to leave town, signaling how concerned leadership is about the Friday funding deadline.
"They need to be very careful in where they tread," said Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of GOP leaders.
Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—their focus solely on getting the tax cuts through over the last few weeks—have pushed off any broader agreement on immigration or raising federal spending caps until January.
We're officially a banana republic now. The basic functions of the legislative branch have completely broken down, and with it pretty much the functioning of all the government. But they can get their act together to steal everything for themselves and their donors. This is where we're at in 2017.
Anyway, what they're fighting over at the moment is an $81 billion disaster supplemental for Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that leadership is planning on attaching to the spending bill. Because the nihilists who are not from Texas and Florida don't think it should happen. See, we can't afford $81 billion to respond to disaster. The bill will also fund defense for an entire year, but only kicks the can on all the rest of the spending programs to January, so we get to go through all this again in a few weeks.
The other fights include whether or not they'll vote on the Obamacare stabilization measures that Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) pretended to insist upon for her vote on the tax bill. Republicans might consider including it, because it gives them one more shot at a health-related bill that they can shove anti-abortion shit into, which is the plan here. However, once Collins votes for the tax cuts bill Tuesday night, no one will care about whatever empty promise Mitch McConnell gave her and it probably won't happen.
There's a slew of stuff that should have happened months ago—funding for CHIP and community health centers, for example—or needs to happen in the next week that's also hanging them up: reauthorization of a surveillance program under the FISA law (Freedom Caucus people don't want that to happen), and resolution of the DACA crisis. All of the stuff that wouldn't have reached a crisis point if these people had any interest in doing the job for which they were elected. They don't. They just wanted to get there to steal all the things. Now that that's being accomplished, the rest can happen or not.