Attribution to Alvesgaspar – Own work

Amidst the Trump circus, another circus could dramatically unfold, by the end of September. Washington went through the debt-limit drama earlier this year where Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy played chicken and McCarthy went away with his wings clipped. The hard-line right went ballistic and said Kevin had not long to live as House Speaker. Yet he still remains.

The next circus, or some could call, clown show, will revolve the need to establish a budget, for next year, by the end of September. Failure to do so could result in a federal government shutdown.

There are ways to go around it by way of temporary extensions, at current levels, but sooner or later one side could draw the line and say ‘we are out of here’. Donald Trump tried that a few years ago and it resulted in the government being shut down for Christmas one year and extending into January. Trump backed down, but lumps of coal were the sum total of Christmas presents, for many families.

The key thing here is that part of the debt-ceiling agreement was that government spending for most government programs would be flat for the next two years. As per Bill Hogaland senior VP at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank,

“The agreement reached on the debt limit set a number for appropriations for upcoming fiscal year, but that number is looked at by the Senate as the floor and looked at by the House as the ceiling.” 

The Republic House is already looking at setting 2024 funding levels at 2022 levels, a level that was set before many of Joe Biden’s approved bills came into being, such as the Inflation reduction Act. The Democrats, of course, will never go for that. Logjam. Added to that is the Presidential election, a year away, where both Biden and McCarthy will try to out-macho each other.

Fun times.