The silly excuse for government is still at it with the spending bill. I think it is interesting because Congress has passed a $900 NDAA but cannot work on a way to keep the government functioning.

This whole thing is a game played by idiots.

A quick recap….

The bipartisan spending bill Congress put forward to prevent a government shutdown is dead, according to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who responded “yes” when asked Wednesday night if the deal had been officially scrapped following President-elect Trump’s rejection of it. House Speaker Mike Johnson has not yet said how he plans to proceed, the BBC reports. Rather than passing a budget for the fiscal year that started October 1, Congress passed a temporary spending bill, which expires Friday. Without a short-term funding bill passing, a federal government shutdown looms.

Then there was movement to solve the impasse….

House Republicans have announced that they’ve reached agreement on a Plan B to avert a government shutdown. They plan a vote later Thursday, the Hill reports, ahead of Friday’s deadline. The new version includes a three-month continuing resolution and a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling but leaves out a congressional pay raise. It also would extend the farm bill for a year and fund disaster aid, per the New York Times. President-elect Trump endorsed the latest proposal on social media.

• “There’s still a lot of negotiations and conversations going on,” and no clear path forward yet, Scalise told reporters, per the New York Post, which refers to the rejected bipartisan stopgap bill as “bloated” at 1,547 pages. Trump has called for it to be streamlined.
• Elon Musk, who had also spoken out aggressively against the bill, posted victoriously after news broke that it had been killed. “Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed.”
• Trump and VP-elect Vance are also calling for the national debt ceiling to be raised; asked whether that’s on the table for the revised stopgap measure, Scalise would only say, “We’re obviously looking at a lot of options.”
• The Hill reports lawmakers on both sides seemed to be “caught off guard” by the debt limit increase demand. Politico reports it’s a “complicated issue lawmakers hadn’t planned to deal with for months,” and there’s quite a bit of concern that it can’t be dealt with in a matter of days.
• Before the deal’s collapse, Johnson went on Fox and Friends to talk about it Wednesday morning, and revealed that he’s on a group text with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and that he’d been texting with them about the background of the deal the night prior, NBC News reports.
• He said he reminded them that with the thin margin Republicans have in the House, Democrat votes are needed, but apparently they (and Trump, and Vance) were unconvinced; as the Washington Post explains, critics of the bill claim it contains too many “giveaways to Democrats.”
• Sources tell Politico and the Hill Johnson is now considering a “clean” continuing resolution as a Plan B, meaning additional provisions such as disaster aid and financial assistance for farmers would be dropped from the spending bill and considered again in the new year. It’s unclear Democrats, or even all of the House’s conservative lawmakers, would support such a move.

The Trump endorsed [plan goes down in flames as well…..

House Democrats didn’t just say they don’t support the new federal spending plan to avoid a government shutdown that the Republicans came up with Thursday. They chanted it. “Hell no, hell no” could be heard coming from the room where the caucus was meeting, the Washington Post reports, as well as rounds of cheering and booing. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had called the proposal “laughable” on his way in. As they left the meeting, members told reporters they were united in their intention to vote against the plan, per the New York Times. A two-thirds majority is required to enact the measure.

Not all Republicans are on board, either. After President-elect Trump said on Sean Hannity’s radio show that GOP Rep. Chip Roy was blocking the bill, the Texan called in himself. “It’s a bad deal, which is what happens in Washington,” Roy told Hannity, per the Post. “The bad deal is this: It’s a watered-down version of the same crappy bill that people were mad about yesterday.” He’s against raising the debt ceiling without accompanying spending cuts. The bill is “horrible,” another Republican said. “I have a feeling it’s going to fail spectacularly,” said Rep. Rich McCormick. GOP leaders were planning a House vote Thursday evening; the shutdown deadline is Friday.

Now the scramble begins to find a deal before the deadline tonight….the big problem is there is no “Plan C’…..

After the House rejected Republicans’ stopgap government spending proposal backed by President-elect Trump—the party’s so-called Plan B after the initial bipartisan bill was dropped—on Thursday evening, the nation might wonder what’s next. GOP Rep. Ralph Norman had an answer, the Hill reports. “There is no plan,” Rep. Ralph Norman said, adding: “Trump wants the thing to shut down.” That’s what will happen if a bill doesn’t pass the House and Senate and receive President Biden’s signature by 12:01am Saturday. The vote was 174-235, with 38 Republicans voting no; the measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass. Republicans then headed back to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to regroup. Politicians were saying:

• GOP Rep. Thomas Massie: “They’re stuck on stupid. They want to shut down,” the lawmaker told reporters, per the Washington Post, referring to fellow Republicans. The House Rules Committee member blamed Johnson for keeping all provisions in a single bill. Splitting them up would allow voters to “see who voted for a shutdown, who voted for a debt limit, who voted for disaster relief,” Massie said, adding, “Quit playing around.”
• Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries: “One or two puppet masters weigh in, and the extreme MAGA Republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well-off, the well-connected millionaires and billionaires, not working-class people all across America,” the Democratic leader said. He had ripped Trump and Elon Musk earlier in the day, as well, for pressuring Republicans to abandon the bipartisan deal. He also said the bill defeated Thursday “is just part of an effort to shut down the government.”
• Trump: “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great,” the president-elect said in a statement, per the New York Times, “but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”
• Sen. Chuck Schumer: “It’s a good thing the bill failed in the House,” the Democratic leader said, per Politico, “and now it’s time to go back to the bipartisan agreement we came to.”
• White House: “President Biden supports the bipartisan agreement to keep the government open, help communities recovering from disasters, and lower costs—not this giveaway for billionaires,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, per ABC News.

Stuck on stupid?  That has been the GOP for 40 years.

As their typical way of handling this thing….Will they find a late night solution?

Will these idiots allow a shutdown?

Will this theater of stupidity ever end?

I have more doctor stuff today….treatments that must be performed before the holidays….hopefully this will be it for awhile give me some time top bounce back.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”