Today, House Republicans are offering a short-term spending bill that they claim is designed to keep government open while they work out a compromise spending for the rest of the fiscal year with Senate Democrats.
The thing is that the House GOP's proposal is nothing more than a two-week version of their spending bill that created the conflict in the first place. Instead of making a serious, good faith offer to avoid a shutdown during negotiations, the House Republican proposal includes the exact same level of cuts as their original bill.
That's not offering a compromise -- it's delivering an ultimatum. GOPers know that their position is unacceptable and will force a government shutdown, but they don't care. They aren't budging one bit.
Democrats have said that if both sides can't reach an agreement on spending by Friday, then we should keep government open by continuing current spending levels while negotiations continue. That's a completely reasonable position. Assuming that a long-term bill will contain some cuts, then Republicans would be smart to agree to a long-term compromise as soon as possible. But by saying it's their way or the highway, Republicans are making it impossible to reach a true compromise.
As if to underscore the extent to which Republicans are now "negotiating" in bad faith, John Boehner flew to Florida yesterday to play golf. (Update: Here's a link to the local coverage of Boehner's outing from the reporter who tracked down the Speaker's activities.) That's right -- just eight days before the government is scheduled to run out of money unless Congress reaches a spending deal, the Speaker of the House was on the links, ignoring the need to get something done.
There's still time to get a deal done to keep government from shutting down. But as long as Republicans refuse to budge, it's not going to happen.
