House Republicans have yet to coalesce around their own plan to avert a government shutdown with just 10 days until the deadline, raising the stakes for a new speaker who will have to contend with the internal dynamics of his conference and a Democratically-controlled Senate and White House.
In an hour-long conference meeting Tuesday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson laid out a series of options for his members including a short-term spending bill through January 19, another laddered approach that would fund some government agencies until one date and the option of waiting to see what the Senate sends them. During the meeting, however, members also introduced their own ideas and laid out their own preferences as the speaker listened, sources said.
They (the GOP) see a shutdown as positive to their efforts to push their Libertarian agenda of stifling, defunding, and shrinking the US government, so they have no incentive to pass a spending bill without some really angry and direct political pressure from their own side.
When you run on the platform that “government doesn’t work”… You sort of have to not do your job to prove that. And somehow they get reelected as if they’re doing a good job.
It’s a self fulfilling cycle, and most of it boils down to greed and ignorance.