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“The U.S. Congress passed a stopgap funding bill late on Saturday with overwhelming Democratic support after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy backed down from an earlier demand by his party's hardliners for a partisan bill…
“McCarthy abandoned party hardliners' insistence that any bill pass the House with only Republican votes… The House voted 335-91 to fund the government through Nov. 17, with more Democrats than Republicans supporting it.” Reuters
“Democratic U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman faced investigation on Sunday, the morning after he pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol complex as his party was trying to delay a key vote, prompting an evacuation of a congressional office building… Bowman, in a statement, admitted to pulling the fire alarm, which he said he regretted, but disputed that he did so to delay the vote.” Reuters
“Rep. Matt Gaetz said Sunday he will try to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a fellow Republican, from his leadership position this week.” AP News
Many on both sides are frustrated with the process and also critical of Bowman:
“Why is it that Congress cannot get their acts straight? Why is it that we have to be in this position at least once a year, or so it seems? This is beyond frustrating as a taxpayer, and I am sure you feel the same. This pathetic attempt by Congress to prevent a shutdown just delays the inevitable. We are going to be doing this again in 45 days. We've put a stranglehold on ourselves right as we start the holiday season, and we all know how that spells disaster.”
Matt Funicello, RedState
“A fight over the speakership takes away from the work of passing a long-term funding deal, as well as negotiating the future of aid to Ukraine… Though 45 days may sound like plenty of time to pass a spending bill, it’s not, particularly given the major partisan divide over government spending. Most Republicans, and especially the hard-right Republicans like Gaetz, are demanding spending cuts across the board, as well as much more stringent border controls, at odds with most Democrats. Anything that distracts from coming to an agreement over a full year of government funding increases [the] risk of a shutdown come November 17.”
Ellen Ioanes, Vox
“Democrats, at first, didn’t seem to know what to do with [McCarthy’s’s ‘clean’ bill] offer. They insisted on time to pore through the 71-page bill once it came out—a bill McCarthy was hoping to vote on within a matter of minutes. They stalled by moving to adjourn. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries bought time by using a privilege reserved for party leaders to speak on the floor without a time limit…
“Those are all typical stalling tactics. An atypical stalling tactic, though, is pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building and forcing an evacuation. This is something middle-schoolers do to avoid taking tests, though, which is perhaps why former middle-school principal New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman was familiar with the tactic and chose to do it… [Bowman’s defense] sounds more than a bit shaky, and one might think he’d let Capitol Police know of his accident before police evacuated the building. He’s in trouble.”
Jim Newell, Slate
“Bowman got caught trying to obstruct Congressional business and now he’s making up a story. Here’s the thing – Bowman started a charter school in the Bronx. He is the founder and former principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. He knows what a fire alarm looks like and how they are used. He knows it is not a door opener. Bowman assumes everyone is dumb enough to take his explanation and let it drop…
“Frankly, this man should be ejected from Congress. This irrational judgment call of his to pull a fire alarm, thus endangering lives and triggering first responders unnecessarily is not acceptable. It is against the law to pull a false alarm – it is a misdemeanor. Republican leadership needs to hold Bowman accountable.”
Karen Townsend, Hot Air
Other opinions below.
“Until Saturday, Kevin McCarthy had managed to mostly keep his conference’s various factions together by avoiding any real governing choices. This was done by advancing symbolic legislation that did not have much of a chance in the Senate, and by getting one must-pass legislative package (increasing the debt ceiling) enacted by promising to do impossible things later. It was always going to be very difficult to sustain that approach…
“McCarthy can no longer really pretend that his approach to running the House is not at odds with the approach that a portion of the House Freedom Caucus wants to see. After the vote Saturday, he explicitly described those HFC members as operating outside the larger Republican conference, even as he said he hoped that might change…
“‘I welcome those 21 back in, and we would get a better and more conservative bill if they would vote with us,’ he said. There is a ‘they’ and an ‘us’ now, and McCarthy’s fate depends upon how many of his members identify with his side of that divide… [The] HFC members may have overplayed their hand here, or it could be that McCarthy has. The coming weeks will tell. But clearly we are in a whole new phase for House Republicans in this Congress.”
Yuval Levin, National Review
“In 2019, four hundred and twenty thousand public employees were forced to work without pay, and another three hundred and eighty thousand were furloughed. This time, the economic and social consequences would be vast. Each week could cost the national economy roughly six billion dollars, according to one projection, and ten thousand low-income students would lose access to Head Start programs. Funding for SNAP benefits, or food stamps, could dry up.”
Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker
“The sin of working with Democrats has now led the loudest extremist, Matt Gaetz of Florida, to promise a vote this week to remove Mr. McCarthy as speaker. If Mr. McCarthy can survive that vote… the wrecking-ball caucus will have to slink into the shadows of defeat…
“‘The problem is, we are being dragged around by 20 people when 200 of us are in agreement,’ Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho, told Carl Hulse… ‘As long as we let those 20 drag us around, we are going to get these kinds of results. At some point in time, you’ve got to say, ‘We’re done.’’… If his gamble succeeds, Mr. McCarthy may finally do the country a service by proving that bipartisanship works.”
David Firestone, New York Times
A libertarian's take
“We know from history that shutdowns don't really save money. After the record 35-day shutdown that ended in January 2019, the Congressional Budget Office found that about $18 billion in federal spending was delayed—less than half of one percent of the $4.4 trillion spent that year. The actual savings were even less, since half of that total was the result of not paying federal employees for five weeks, which means they were immediately wiped out when the government reopened and those workers got their back pay…
“If the government had shut down on Sunday morning, it wouldn't have been the dramatically disruptive event that so many in the media and bureaucracy wanted to portray it as. But it wouldn't have been a step toward solving America's fiscal problems either. What happens between now and November will be crucial.”
Eric Boehm, Reason
