Congress Performs Shutdown Kabuki Yet Again

Maybe We Need A Real Shutdown Until Next January 20?

Is there any exercise in the DC Swamp more retarded, more hypocritical, and less productive than the endless melodrama of Congress passing repeated Continuing Resolutions to fund the federal government?

If there is, I can’t think of what that might be, especially since Congress is determined to go through this Kabuki theater of shutdown hysterics yet again.

At midnight on December 20, the government’s funding officially runs out, and if new funding is not appropriated, the government must shut down.

The volume on this most recent iteration of Congressional clownishness was turned up on Sunday, when the “negotiators” on both sides of the partisan aisle mysteriously failed to produce the text of the needed Continuing Resolution as planned. Despite the shutdown deadline being at this point just days away, members of Congress found it appropriate to keep bickering—and stalling—rather than slapping a band-aid spending bill together to carry through until the next Congress.

Keep in mind the next Congress begins on January 3, 2025. That is a mere sixteen days from today.

Instead of having a suitably short-term mind-set, however, the “negotiators” wanted to fund various bits of the bureaucracy for longer than absolutely needed.

Key players had indicated this week that the forthcoming CR, which keeps the government funded at current levels, would also include another one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill, as both sides have struggled to agree on a longer-term plan. But lawmakers had also ramped up talks of potential add-ons to provide economic assistance for farmers as part of the broader funding plan.

Rather than focusing on what is needed to keep the lights on until the new Congress can begin session, our elected representatives are dithering and dickering over what long-term spending they can shoehorn into this “stopgap” spending bill.

Just so everyone can stay on the same page, let’s remember what “stopgap” means:

something that serves as a temporary expedient

Why in the nine circles of Hell are our elected representatives trying to shoehorn a long-term farm subsidy bill into something that, by definition, is supposed to be a temporary “band-aid” type of measure?

But that was not the most absurd spending request that was included in the “negotiations”. Not content with playing political football with taxpayer dollars, Democrats wanted to drag in actual NFL football.

Maryland’s congressional delegation, which holds outsize sway on the appropriations process, issued additional demands, too, related to negotiations over future home of the Washington Commanders. The NFL team now plays its home games at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, a venue widely regarded as one of the worst in the league.

Congress apparently gets to throw taxpayer dollars—federal taxpayer dollars—at a new local sports venue. Taxpayer dollars from Texas, from Illinois, from California, all get to go towards a nice new stadium for the football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. Doesn’t matter whether you like football or not, you get to send your hard earned dollars into the swamp to make sure the nation’s capital can shelter a football team in the style to which they would dearly love to become accustomed.

Yeah, can we not do that?

Meanwhile, the usual cadre of Freedom Caucus malcontents struck their normal ineffectual pose of complaining about being “forced” to vote on yet another “stopgap” funding bill.

“It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. “This is what Washington, D.C., has done. This is why I ran for Congress, to try to stop this. And sadly, this is happening again.”

“We get this negotiated crap, and we’re forced to eat this crap sandwich,” echoed Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another Freedom Caucus member. “Why? Because freaking Christmas is right around the corner. It’s the same dang thing every year. Legislate by crisis, legislate by calendar. Not legislate because it’s the right thing to do.”

Sadly, the Freedom Caucus is likely to fail once again to put a stop to the budgetary excesses which have become de rigueur in Congress. Instead of representing their constituents—which is what they are sworn to do—and building an effective coalition to vote down the fiscal insanity, they are going to once again allow themselves to either be “forced” to vote on the CR, regardless of the pork-barrel spending it contains, or stand idly by while the Establishmentarians on both sides of the aisle who want the excessive spending ram through a bill with all their pet projects.

One does not even have to read the bill to realize that is exactly what is happening. When Speaker Johnson finally released the text of the spending bill, it ran over 1,500 pages!

Of course, if one actually does read the bill, there’s even more lunacy to raise one’s blood pressure.

Reporter Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner noted that the bill extends funding for the Censorship Industrial Complex, in the form of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

There are almost certainly other offensive bits in there as well. Hopefully Vivek Ramaswamy and Rand Paul can make good on their efforts to read through this monstrosity of a bill and identify more items which should be removed.

Yet what has not been included in the bill is getting as many legislators worked up as what is in the bill.

Senator Mike Lee is particularly peeved that RECA reauthorization, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which Lee an several other senators on both sides of the aisle have been working on, was not included in the CR text—apparently at the request or at least with the approval of Speaker Johnson himself.

The purpose of RECA has been to compensate people injured because of how the US government has handled nuclear waste and conducted nuclear testing over the years.

How much funding for that is appropriate is a matter of debate, but reauthorizing such an act surely should take greater priority than funding a football stadium!

Senator Josh Hawley, who had also worked on the reauthorization, was similarly upset.

Senator Hawley summed up the sorry state of the CR quite nicely.

At the same time, Congress is still managing to overlook one very awkward bit of reality: a conspicuous lack of sufficient tax revenue.

While 2021 was something of a banner year for tax receipts, ever since then the inflow to the federal coffers has been dwindling. Only one quarter—Q1 of this year—has seen tax receipts above $70 billion. For three successive quarters between Q4 of 2022 and Q2 of 2023, tax receipts were actually negative!

Since the first quarter, moreover, tax receipts this year have been steadily declining.

If the federal government were being run as a business—or as the typical taxpayer household—the spending would be trimmed as the income was being reduced.

Clearly, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress did not get that memo on budgeting and financial literacy.

Nor is this the time of year when Congress should be feeling even a little profligate with the public fisc. Over the past several years, the first and second quarters of the year are typically the “poor” quarters for tax receipts.

Congress needs to craft a “stopgap” spending bill for that time of year when there is the least amount of money flowing into the federal coffers.

The spending bill aims to carry the government through until next March, which means Congress has at most one “rich” month for tax receipts—December—to fund things, and after that it has to deal with the lean winter months of the first quarter of the calendar year.

Again, if Congress were approaching this with the financial prudence of a typical taxpayer household or a typical taxpayer business, the spending levels particularly now would be way down.

Personally, I’m okay with shutting the entire government down and sending most of the bureaucrats home without pay until sometime in the next Congress.

However, I realize that is probably not going to happen, but, for good measure, this is how I would craft a “stopgap” spending bill.

Recognizing that there are limited funds coming in for December through next March, the CR spending should be capped at the amount that the government is likely to receive: approximately $36.5 billion.

Congress should authorize exactly that much spending, and tell the Executive Branch to make it last until the end of March, 2025. Shut down any and all operations necessary to stretch that much money that far.

If the next Congress wants to provide additional funding for specific departments and/or programs, the next Congress can do so. In the meantime, DOGE gets an early Christmas present!

Sadly, I suspect that there is a better chance of the Cowboys winning the Superbowl than there is of my idea being put into legislative practice.

At the end of the day, all of this Congressional handwaving is pretty much an exercise in Kabuki theater. The poses are scripted. The attitudes are scripted. The politics are scripted.

The final CR that gets passed will be very close to the pork-laden monstrosity that Speaker Johnson published. And there will be just enough Republican votes to make sure the CR passes. Everyone will be in high dudgeon and speak slightingly of Speaker Johnson.

Yet the CR will pass. The pork will be included. Congress will continue to do business as usual.

More and more, I am thinking that, come the next election cycle, the best thing for the country to do is simply vote “none of the above” for everyone. Don’t elect anybody to anything, certainly not to the US Congress.

Instead of just momentary shutdowns here and there, let’s just send Congress home without pay. Send the bureaucrats home without pay. Close down the whole bloody government.

The end results can’t be any worse than the clown world Kabuki we’re seeing right now.