After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown, even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver. And the deal-making will play out as two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

  • Cethin
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    11 year ago

    My hope (and I don’t think it’s unfounded) is that the democratic party splits in half. The neoliberals take the democratic party name and moderate/conservative position and a new progressive party is created to their left.

    • @assassin_aragorn
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      21 year ago

      This is my thinking as well actually. It should be put off as long as possible to make sure they don’t spoil each other in elections (until we get ranked choice anyway). But in the long term, I absolutely see Democrats absorbing those closer to the center and becoming a centrist/conservative party for economics, and progressives splitting off to make a progressive party, which would have enormous gains in popularity.

      They’d all be socially liberal though. You’d still have a Trump party, but they’d be uninteresting and unimportant dregs, who are the home for social conservatives. They’ll be who we look at to remind ourselves our opponent could always be worse.