With the presidential election just two months away, the House of Representatives, the branch of government which controls funding the government, has chosen to use its fiduciary power this time to once again threaten shutting down federal spending while demanding radical changes in American voting rights.
The current government fiscal year began on October 1, 2023. In any normal governmental process, some time during the last eleven months the president would have recommended a full new annual budget for the fiscal year starting October 1, 2024, the House would have countered with a proposal of their own which was tempered by feedback from the Senate, and a bill would have been proposed.
The proposal would have gone through multiple committee reviews, then eventually passed in the House with some straightforward amendments. The Senate would pass a further modified version of the bill based on their own reviews, a joint committee of both houses would approve it, and it would go to the White House for final signoff. Since the president’s staff would have been intimately involved in every step of the process, the bill would readily have become law.
That would also have happened many months before the end of the fiscal year, or prior to when a previous stopgap funding measure would have expired.
This is not the situation in the U.S. government in 2024.
Since October of last year, the House of Representatives has chosen to ignore most of the proposed federal budget recommendations from the White House, largely because it is Republican-controlled, and the White House is headed up by Democrat Joe Biden. They have also chosen to propose only continuing resolutions rather than create their own alternative look at the budget.
The reason why no new budget has been proposed is that this is a presidential election year. If Trump were to be elected and re-occupy the White House in January, that alone would represent a major shift in the balance of power in Congress. The House would likely strengthen its Republican majority representation as well. The Senate too, which the Democrats control by a tiny majority, could also flip to Republican control. These changes would enable the new administration to institute drastically different budget proposals, including almost certainly new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy such as Trump instituted early in his 2017-2021 term, and slashing of social programs.
This is why all the House has considered seriously are resolutions which would essentially authorize an “as is” spending rate going forward. This is as opposed to incorporating either part of what the Biden White House might have wanted included, or any of the more substantial changes the Republicans might want but could not muster enough votes for to push through either in the narrowly controlled House or the Democratic Senate.
But because this is a highly charged political year with Trump the Republican nominee once again, even these continuing resolutions did not make it even out of the House this time. In the past eleven months, six different continuing resolutions, with various contentious amendments which had nothing to do with the financial authorizations themselves, made their way out of committee in the House for votes. Each time they were voted down.
They were also voted down with 56 Republicans opposing the bill.
Without a new continuing resolution, the government goes into shutdown as of the end of the day on September 30, 2024. Most federal workers will not be paid as of that time, some substantial debt payments will not be paid, and expenses related to government activities will be put off. If the shutdown continues, eventually a larger percentage of the government will cease operations, and the country could go into default on critical payment items.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has a continuing budget resolution plan for the country to address those concerns, one which provides government funding for six months, but it also includes a highly-politically-charged component which has nothing to do with the budget which Democrats are mostly staunchly opposed to.
That component is a formal change in the law which would require all Americans to be required to provide proof of citizenship before they can register to vote in a federal election. It is called the SAVE Act.
For now, Johnson is effectively holding the country hostage unless his amendment is approved. But because mandating voters show a voter id card or other proof of citizenship even to register is such a polarizing demand, few believe even most Republicans in the House would approve it. Speaker Johnson disagrees, believing he can pull together the support he needs to pass it in the House. He also says there is no other bill that he would support to keep the government open past the end of this month.
Yesterday the bill made it through a key procedural vote allowing it to go forward yesterday by the narrow margin of 209 to 206. Even that was a surprise to those close to the situation. But often Congressional representatives will allow for these sorts of interim approvals to go forward, if they focus solely on Congressional rules for getting a bill from committees to the full floor rather than the content of the bill itself.
Standing in Johnson’s way of getting the bill passed in his own chamber are Andy Biggs of Arizona and Matt Rosendale of Montana, both of which are Republicans who voted against Johnson on the procedural vote.
Those representing the most extreme right-wing Republicans are also against the idea of financing the government via a continuing resolution and may vote against the measure because they would rather see a full budget be pushed through, especially with the concern that the November elections could upend the balance of power in favor of the Democrats and make the next full budget bill less favorable to Republicans.
There is a third Republican contingent within the House which wants a shorter continuing resolution than the one Johnson had proposed, which would run past the holiday shutdown season into 2025. This group would like to see the proposed continuing resolution to run only until the end of the calendar year. That would make it possible for the existing Congress to be the arbiter of the 2025 budget. This approach might also be favored by Democrats and have a higher chance of passage.
It is also of note that each of the six times the House floated a continuing proposal idea since last October, it failed with a full 56 Republican congressional representatives voting against it. That could spell problems for Johnson’s new plan even without the controversial voter id provision attached.
Typical of Republican congressional complaints against Johnson’s continuing resolution bill is something Rep. Thomas Massie IR-Kentucky) wrote in social media on September 9.
"The 6-month continuing resolution with the SAVE Act attached is an insult to Americans' intelligence," Massie wrote. "The CR doesn't cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage."
Standing against all of this is Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump himself. He would rather see the government forced into shutdown just before the election and blame the whole thing on the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump came out strongly in support of Johnson’s mandatory voter id provision, which could say Johnson has a chance with his measure. But the former occupant of the White House is also calling out in advance what he sees is massive election fraud ahead in the November 2024 election, and demanding some guarantees be attached to the legislation that would prevent that.
"If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don't get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump blasted out about this yesterday via his TruthSocial social media account yesterday.
Since there is no way a law could be passed this month which would mandate any changes in voter identification laws and requiring in-person elections, both of which are things Trump is demanding, Trump’s rants are mostly transparent means of setting the stage for another post-election set of state-by-state lawsuits in the event he loses the upcoming election. But he remains with cult-like influence over many Republicans, enough so, assuming he keeps spreading lies about vast upcoming fraudulent election practices, that he might have the power to get Johnson’s bill passed in the House.
This could then give Trump what he wants, which is a government shutdown which he can unfortunately probably convince a substantial percentage of Americans has nothing to do with his pathological drive for power and the House Republicans’ willingness to do his bidding.