Uncertainty, thy name is Congress.
With only days remaining — hours, really — to avoid a shutdown of the federal government, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced Friday that he will step down from his post and leave Congress all together. His resignation, at least in the short term, apparently will be enough to satisfy conservative Republicans who were determined to force a shutdown after Sept. 30 unless the budget deal included language to end funding for Planned Parenthood.
But the deal is likely to last only until Dec. 11, when, with a new House speaker, Congress is likely to be standing at the brink of shutdown once again.
“It’s crazy to me that we’re having this conversation,” said Sen. Patty Murray by phone from Washington, D.C., a day after the historic address of Pope Francis before a joint session of Congress, where he implored for a “renewal of a spirit of cooperation.”
Whether its next week or in mid-December, Americans are confronting the prospects for a shutdown that would, Murray said, send civilian workers home from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and Naval Station Everett, close national parks, limit job training programs offered locally by Workforce Snohomish and send working parents looking for child care because of the closure of Head Start programs.
The people affected by a shutdown, “they’re not asking who the next speaker will be,” Murray said. “The want to know that their government is working.”
Having been here before when she brokered a bipartisan budget deal with Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan less than two years ago, Sen. Murray won’t take much satisfaction in a continuing resolution that only carries things over until Dec. 11.
“It’s unbelievable to me that we’ve let this go for six months and created so much economic uncertainty now to be held until the end of the year,” she said.
As Sens. Murray and Ryan did in 2013, a two-year budget deal will need to restore the budget cuts forced by sequestration, about $80 billion in spending that would be roughly split between the Defense Department and other government programs. Republicans will have to be discouraged from demanding any deal that lifts sequestration for defense spending only.
It’s not just that Congress must adopt a budget. In short order, it also must:
- Pass a transportation budget by the end of October to keep road work and transit programs going;
- Consider an increase of the debt ceiling limit at some point this fall;
- Reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which has been in mothballs since June;
- Reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which for 50 years has been crucial to creating parks and other public lands and expires Wednesday; and
- Extend tax relief and credits, including the sales tax deduction that many Washington state residents rely on at income tax time.
Conservative Republicans can crow about having forced out their own speaker, and maybe their next leader will be more to their liking. But the only thing that will be to the liking of most Americans is a Congress that, taking the counsel of the pontiff, will cooperate, negotiate and compromise for the good of the people.
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