It's December, so House Speaker Paul Ryan is having to fend off (or in most cases, capitulate to) the demands of the House maniacs, otherwise known as the Freedom Caucus. To flex their muscle, they nearly derailed a key vote on the tax bill Monday night. The House did vote in the end to appoint conferees to negotiate with the Senate in working out a deal.
In a dramatic political stunt, more than a dozen members of the House Freedom Caucus withheld their support for a crucial procedural vote on the GOP's tax bill, threatening an embarrassing blow to GOP leadership.
The conservatives eventually relented, approving what had been thought to be a formality — a motion to appoint negotiators to hammer out a final tax bill with the Senate. […]
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the Freedom Caucus chairman, said after Monday's vote that he "felt very good" about his conversation on the floor with Speaker Paul Ryan, who personally involved himself in the arm-twisting of conservatives.
One of the larger points of that exercise was just to demonstrate to Ryan that they have lots of weight to throw around when it comes to their real goal: ever-more drastic spending cuts in the end-of-the-year continuing resolution, and fending off any potential votes on the legislation Democrats are demanding be put on the floor. Democrats are demanding to have legislative action on resolving the limbo for young people covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and two bills stabilizing the Affordable Care Act markets.
It looks like the maniacs' maneuver Monday night worked, in as much as leadership has promised them "that they won't grant concessions to Democrats to get enough votes for a stopgap spending bill—gaining GOP support but also raising the specter of a government shutdown later this month."
Majority party leaders in the House tentatively decided Tuesday morning to hold tight on their plan to fund the government through Dec. 22, bucking calls from conservatives to move the deadline to Dec. 30.
Still whipping to ensure sufficient GOP support, leaders pushed off a Rules Committee meeting and final floor action by a day, with House passage on the two-week patch, now expected Thursday. Government funding runs out on Friday.
That means Ryan would have to go it alone, with no help from Nancy Pelosi at all. Which he has the votes to do, if he sticks to the maniacs' demands. The sticky problem, as always, is that the House doesn't act alone and any CR has to pass the Senate with 60 votes. That means it has to get eight Democrats, and in case Ryan hasn't been paying attention, Senate Democrats are sticking together on the big stuff. Even if he could peel some away, it sure wouldn't be as many as eight.
Same as it ever was, unless this time around they can get McConnell to do their bidding and jettison the legislative filibuster, one of their favorite bugaboos. But there, McConnell would have to have a united Republican conference to get that done, and after all the backlash they’re feeling over how they passed the tax bill, there are going to be plenty of them who would want nothing to do with that.
All to say, the odds of a government shutdown are getting higher by the day.