House Speaker Paul Ryan channeled the occupier of the Oval Office Tuesday morning, with all the bluster and bullshit blame-games you'd expect from a loyal Trumpster. The House will vote Tuesday late afternoon or evening about yet another stop-gap funding bill, the fifth continuing resolution (CR) of fiscal year 2018. And the fact that he’s doing yet another CR is all the Democrats' fault, he’d have you believe. Despite the fact that Republicans have the majority in the House, Senate, and hold the White House. So what's Ryan going to do? Put a CR on the floor that he knows the Senate can't and won't pass.
The CR Ryan will put on the floor, and which will likely pass, contains a full year of funding for the Defense Department—and lifts the budget cap on it to provide $659 billion for the Pentagon—but only provides temporary funding for the rest of government, with the exception of two years of community health center funds.
House GOP leaders believe the package will placate GOP defense hawks, who are upset that there has not been a big increase in Pentagon spending, as they had hoped when President Donald Trump was elected. Without that extra funding, defense hawks have resisted another short-term bill. This one, Congress' fifth since September, would last through late March, according to multiple GOP sources.
The Senate almost certainly cannot pass this package due to Democratic opposition, and will remove the defense funding before sending it back to the House. Ryan will then face a challenge on whether he can move that bill through the chamber. Yet on Monday night, that wasn't on the House GOP radar screen. All they were worried about was Tuesday's vote.
“Trying to get the CR though, with the defense [funding], is what the goal is," said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee who is running for chairman next year. "This is what I think most members wanted to see." […]
Without Democratic support, Ryan and Republicans would have to pass a short-term funding bill on their own — with the Senate likely to strip the extra defense money later. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned Monday afternoon that that sending a bill with a Pentagon budget boost "would be barreling head-first into a dead-end." Forty-four Senate Democrats have already rejected the idea, more than enough to block the bill.
There's an added "fuck you" to the Democrats, by the way, because they're scheduled to start their annual retreat on Wednesday. Sending a bill to the Senate that he knows won't pass there means that the House will have to vote again. Which means Democrats will have to interrupt their retreat to come back and vote to prevent a government shutdown.
Meanwhile, the Senate is actually making progress in separate negotiations on the spending caps, though they're having less success on the tied issue of immigration and a solution for the Dreamers under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—Trump's 800,000 hostages. But just in terms of this CR, Ryan could just do a short-term straight-across funding with the added community health center money while the spending cap negotiations play out. He'd have the Democratic votes to pass that.
Instead, he has to play to the Freedom Caucus maniacs on defense spending, and create more drama and more angst. Because he's more interested in being a Trump toady than a national leader.