It’s the Thursday before the Friday when the government could run out of funding, but Congress is one step closer to preventing a shutdown. The House passed the omnibus funding bill late Wednesday, including an emergency aid package of $13.6 billion for Ukraine. The Senate, wanting to start its weekend on Thursday, as is its tradition, will try to pass the funding bill ahead of Friday’s deadline. But Republicans have partisan, Trumpy, anti-vaxxy scores to try to settle, so it might go down to the wire.
One element they won’t be fighting over is the COVID-19 public health funding that Republicans hate. The House had to pull that $15.6 billion chunk of funding when Democratic members discovered at the last minute that the funding for it was being offset to meet Republican demands by clawing back money that had already been promised to 30 states. Most of those states had included the funding in their budgets, and were facing the potential disaster of losing tens or hundreds of millions if that offset passed.
It was a poor showing by House leadership, who released the bill just hours before members were expected to vote and then had to negotiate for hours off the floor before they could get back to passing government funding and Ukraine aid. It was an unforced error in giving Mitch McConnell any kind of ammunition to gloat and troll.
“House Democrats mutinied against Speaker Pelosi, he said Thursday morning. “The far left would rather preserve state and local bureaucrats' giant slush funds than fund vaccines and therapeutics for our citizens. So, the COVID component has fallen out.” McConnell could have an opportunity to support those things since the House has created a standalone bill for that funding. But of course he won’t.
It’s needed. The administration is running out of funds for procuring more therapeutics and for preparing for the next probably new variant surge. “People just aren’t getting it,” a health official, told Politico. “If more funding doesn’t come, Americans will be without the vaccines, treatments, and tests they will need if we have another surge or variant—or even if we don’t.”
But robbing the states and local governments of their public health funding isn’t the answer. That same official, however, pointed out that it’s the Republicans who gleefully created this crisis. “Ironically, the same members who crowed about the lack of preparedness when omicron hit are now refusing to provide the funding needed to prevent history from repeating itself,” they said.
If the funding the administration needs to keep fighting this pandemic is going to pass, it’s going to have to be through budget reconciliation, which can pass with a simple majority in the Senate because Republicans can’t filibuster it. There is still a budget reconciliation vehicle available to Democrats—the package that was going to be Build Back Better and which currently doesn’t really have a name, or a new framework. They’re going to have to figure it out fast, and maybe name it the “Joe Manchin Saves the Nation Act” to get it passed.
What did get done Wednesday night is the $13.6 billion for military and humanitarian support to Ukraine and its neighboring allies, along with the packed-up 12 regular funding bills that will keep government running through September.
Republicans in the Senate, where any single senator can delay it from passing quickly, are already bitching about having to pass it. “It’s just dysfunctional to have something as large as this and then expect people to vote on it without having the opportunity to review it,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told CNN. As if Republicans hadn’t forced this last-minute process by refusing for the past five months to pass the appropriations bills.
They’re still threatening it. They want to force amendment votes on their Trumpy, trucker-convoy anti-vaxx political theater. Utah Republican Mike Lee insists that he will not agree to let the bill be fast-tracked—threatening both a government shutdown and urgent aid to Ukraine unless his anti-vaccine mandate for health care workers amendment gets a simple majority vote. In other words, abolish the filibuster for his one partisan issue.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is still negotiating with these terrorists to come up with an agreement to get the bill done Thursday. The longer this takes, the closer to a shutdown we get.
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