Stop me if you've heard this one before: Congress isn't going to agree to a long-term spending deal before the government shuts down on Friday.
The Washington Post reports that congressional staffers and leaders are meeting today to discuss the terms of a continuing resolution to keep the government running.
Aides to key negotiators from both parties planned to meet Tuesday in an effort to rekindle budget talks, setting up a Wednesday meeting of the leaders themselves. If they cannot agree, the government would shut down at midnight Friday for the first time since 2013.
House Republican leaders are scheduled to discuss their plans for a stopgap spending measure with rank-and-file lawmakers Tuesday evening.
We knew this was coming, but we apparently knew it was coming before some members of Congress did.
In this particular instance we're days away from a possible government shutdown because Trump unilaterally rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and he won't sign a bill to codify it if it doesn't include money for his fantasy border wall. But if it wasn't that, it would be something else, right?
There's always something. Right now it's DACA, but last year, and the year before that, and the year before that it was something else. We almost had a government shutdown in 2015 because Republicans did not want to hold a vote on the display of Confederate flags at federal cemeteries.
If a continuing resolution is passed this week, reports say it will only fund the government for another month and we'll have end up having this discussion again in February.
The Republican party is not a governing party.