It was expected that Congress will pass yet another continuing resolution to keep the government running beyond next week, but now we know how long it will be until we have this same conversation again.
Bloomberg reports that congressional Republican staffers are putting together a bill that will fund the federal government until March 23rd.
House and Senate staff are working on a stopgap funding bill that would keep the government operating through March 23, though Republican leaders haven’t yet made a final decision on the plan, according to two Republican congressional aides. [...]
“That could be a moving date, but I’ve heard it could be the 23rd," Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said Thursday at a GOP retreat in West Virginia.
The Congressional Budget Office recently informed Congress that the debt ceiling will be reached in early March rather than April which means the continuing resolution they pass next week will almost certainly have to be accompanied by a measure for raising the ceiling.
Congressional Republican leaders at the GOP's policy retreat have reportedly said they want to attach the debt ceiling to a basic funding bill and I think we know why.
Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows said this week that he wants to attach spending cuts and other "reforms" to the debt ceiling. But the Freedom Caucus has never voted to raise the debt ceiling. The Speaker, whether it was John Boehner or Paul Ryan, has relied on Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling and pass basic government funding bills.
As I said several weeks ago, one of the reasons a prolonged government shutdown would never convince the GOP to renew the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is because a large number of Republicans would be happy if the government never reopened. The Freedom Caucus, which counts over 40 members, doesn't want to fund the government.
Analogizing Republicans to hostage takers is usually appropriate, but some of them are more like political suicide bombers.