Negotiators are still haggling over the four spending measures set to expire at week’s end.
Government funding talks devolved into public finger pointing Sunday evening, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accused House Republicans of needing to “sort themselves out” and Speaker Mike Johnson cited “new Democrat demands” for snagging endgame negotiations.
Top lawmakers and appropriators had hoped to unveil the text of a small spending package over the weekend, possibly alongside another short-term funding patch to buy more time for talks on fiscal 2024 bills, beyond the March 1 and March 8 shutdown deadlines. But any hope of reaching an agreement is now slipping into the week, risking a funding lapse at midnight on Friday for the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and others.
Spoiler alert: there won’t be a shutdown.
The moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that there was a real wolf at the end.
As exhausting as it is, there’s a very real threat this dysfunctional House majority actually drops the ball and fucks everyone. In fact, the MAGA caucus delights in the idea.
They may be relying on burnout to let it finally fail.