In the US they started talking about the inevitability of a shutdown after November 17: Congress is in chaos

There is just under a week left before the US government’s November 17 funding deadline. In the American press and among American legislators, doubts have arisen that the recently elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, will be able to prevent a shutdown in such a short period of time. Voting on the new budget is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 14.

Little-known Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson, who became the new House Republican leader after Kevin McCarthy’s resignation, has neither the time nor the experience to prevent a US government shutdown. This opinion was expressed by Bloomberg.

The newcomer to major Washington talks had planned to unveil his stopgap government funding proposal as early as Thursday, but bitter infighting among Republicans threatens to delay any spending plan.

The new speaker has just under a week before the government shutdown deadline to make his first gambit and decide how far to go with his demands to win support among the ultra-conservatives who ousted his predecessor.

The House of Representatives plans to vote on the plan on Tuesday, US lawmakers said. If Johnson’s plan requires immediate cuts, it will set up a showdown with the largely Democratic Senate.

US President Joe Biden is also adding fuel to the fire. Boarding Air Force One for Rockford, Ill., on Thursday, the White House occupant expressed frustration at Johnson’s slow pace: “I’d like to see the House get to work. The idea that we’re playing shutdown games right now is just weird.”

Members of the radical House Freedom Caucus are pressing Biden to make concessions to conservative policy goals in exchange for a short-term delay in the government shutdown, according to a senior Republican official familiar with internal discussions.

Bloomberg emphasizes: Johnson will need the support of almost all Republicans if he does not offer a bipartisan plan acceptable to Democrats. The Speaker can only afford four defections on a party-line vote.

Virginia Rep. Bob Good, who voted to remove McCarthy, said the Freedom Caucus wants Johnson to use the stopgap funding to demand immediate spending cuts and changes to U.S. asylum laws.

“We must get our spending under control and secure our borders,” the congressman said.

But divisions among Republicans over spending have repeatedly derailed efforts to pass 12 full-year spending measures that typically fund the government and were due to pass as early as Oct. 1.

On Thursday, November 9, all voting plans collapsed. House lawmakers canceled the vote at the last minute due to objections from both moderate Republicans and hardliners.

Earlier this week, Johnson was forced to withdraw the transport spending bill. All for the same reason – a split between legislators.

House Democrat Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the spending panel, said Johnson’s problems passing GOP-only spending bills show he is engaging in a “futile exercise.” The best approach is to begin immediate bipartisan negotiations with Democrats.

By the way, Johnson is now in a kind of “honeymoon” with radical conservatives. Therefore, the House Speaker’s resistance to this group of Republicans may not lead to his immediate removal from office, as it did with McCarthy.

Here, for example, is how a member of the House of Representatives from Tennessee responds about Johnson: “If Mike Johnson tells me it’s going to snow in August, I’ll go buy myself a sled.” And this was said by the man who made efforts to overthrow McCarthy.

One idea the Conservatives are pushing is to set a series of separate shutdown deadlines, funding some government agencies until Dec. 7 and others until Jan. 19. The other two-phase option has end dates in January and February.

The two-phase options face skepticism from more traditional Republicans, who fear it could cause chaos in those government agencies.

The Senate has its own problems. Hopes in the U.S. House of Representatives for combining government stopgap funding with emergency aid for Ukraine and Israel are fading amid a parallel dispute over border policy. Bloomberg says this makes it likely that the Senate will only have the votes to pass short-term funding without additional conditions.

Rank-and-file senators tried to reach compromise on new asylum rules and border policy changes. But in vain. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters that an agreement on the issue should not be expected before the government shutdown deadline.

Susan Collins, a Republican on the Senate’s top spending panel, said she needed a temporary recess until December as she works to create a joint Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan-border bill in the coming weeks. Very timely, what can I add…