Congress must fund the federal government before October 1st to prevent a shutdown and it appears that no one including House Republicans believe they can use this opportunity to pass their poison pills or policy riders.
House Republican leaders addressed their caucus members during a private meeting yesterday where laid out their plans that we could see coming since before this session of Congress even began.
With government funding deadlines approaching on Sept. 30, lawmakers are planning to send multiple packages of spending bills to the president for his signature this month. Whatever agencies Congress can’t fund through these so-called “minibuses,” Republicans and Democrats plan to keep running through their old legislative friend, the continuing resolution.
House GOP leaders told members Wednesday morning that the goal was to have “no drama” before the midterm elections ― read: no shutdowns ― and that would almost certainly mean avoiding a fight with Democrats over border wall funding.
Members of the Freedom Caucus have implied that they may not vote for the so-called "minibus" bills to fund individual agencies knowing that the backup plan is to fund them through a clean continuing resolution. From their perspective, there's no reason to vote for a clean appropriations bill that doesn't include their policy riders if there's no real risk to the agency's budget.
That makes sense and it's the reason why the federal government has been funded by a series of continuing resolutions for years. Republicans have not completed the full appropriations process a single time since they took control of Congress in 2015. National defense is the only area of government that's still routinely funded the old fashioned way.
It's within the realm of possibility that an agency or two will be properly funded within the next three weeks, but it's more likely that most if not all of the federal government will be temporarily funded by another continuing resolution.
There will be no border wall and Paul Ryan will leave Congress without passing a single one of his big "reforms."
For their part, Democrats believe funding the government without poison pills and riders is a victory in itself given that Republicans control the entire government. I have to agree.