Saturday, December 21, 2024

And There Was Much Rejoicing

In an interview, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) poured cold water on the deal, saying it was shortsighted to not fight for a longer time frame for Trump and GOP lawmakers to get their feet under them as they assume control of both chambers of Congress as well as the White House. 
Saying he would have preferred moving the date out to September, he lamented, "I think it’s kind of stupid. Don’t ask me to explain or defend this dysfunction.” 
According to NBC's Kapur, "In the last four days, the communication was particularly poor. A day after Speaker Mike Johnson released an initial bipartisan deal, Trump and his billionaire confidant Elon Musk blew it up. The speaker went through three additional iterations of his plan to prevent a shutdown, ultimately succeeding after nixing Trump’s most consequential — and last-minute — demand." 
According to Johnson, the end result created a mess that will still need to be dealt with. 
“We got a big mess on our hands, no doubt about it,” Johnson said. “That’s why I’m trying to underpromise and hopefully over-deliver.” 
Add to that, the report states, "In addition to another government funding deadline and a debt limit that must be addressed by mid-2025 to avert a calamitous default, Trump and Republicans need to confirm his personnel through the Senate, and they want to pass major party-line bills to beef up immigration enforcement and extend his expiring 2017 tax law."
Remember all those bold pronouncements about what Trump would do the minute his hand left the Bible? Yea, he’s gonna need Congress AND a functioning Cabinet to start any of that.
The tumult of the last week "foretells something very ominous about next year,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said after the House vote, noting that the Republican majority in the lower chamber will be even smaller next year. 
“I think we’re in for a lot of turbulence on the Republican side of the House because of the instability and chaos and disruption that Trump embraces," Connolly said. 
He also wondered whether Republicans will be able to elect a speaker on Jan. 3 with a wafer-thin majority; it took 15 rounds of voting to elect a speaker at the beginning of the last Congress and some hard-right Republicans are wobbly on Speaker Johnson after his handling of the shutdown threat this week. 
“So I leave very unsettled tonight in terms of what we just experienced,” Connolly said before the House adjourned for the holidays. “I think it’s very ominous, and it is portentous.”
And a blast from the past:

November 29:
"The Trump administration has learned some lessons from the first time around and will be a bit more prepared to go into these funding fights with a little bit more of a long-term plan, as far as what they want to execute," Nobles claimed.
Sure they will. And that starts when?

I just have a hard time complaining when the chaos Trump supposedly uses, instead devours him. It’s not that he’s a chaos agent; it’s that he’s incompetent, and chaos follows like darkness follows the absence of light.
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