It's still not clear if Congress will reach an agreement on a coronavirus aid or stimulus package of some description but, as of this writing, they have an even bigger problem on their hands.
Funding for the federal government will expire at midnight tonight unless another continuing resolution (CR) is passed before then and, as of right now, several Republicans are threatening to block a CR for their own reasons
The most insidious of their objections comes from GOP Senator Pat Toomey who wants to block the Federal Reserve from supporting the economy by inserting language into a government funding bill.
Democrats say Republican Senator Pat Toomey is promoting a plan to rein in the Fed’s emergency lending authority in an effort to make it more difficult for Biden’s incoming Democratic-led administration to handle the COVID-19 crisis, with Trump talking about running for president again in 2024.
Toomey denies this, saying the lending authorities were expiring anyway.
Larry Kudlow, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House on Friday that the Trump administration is “strongly in support” of Toomey’s plan.
Of course Trump is "strongly in support" of Toomey's supposedly non-existent plan to intentionally weaken the economy and hamstring the incoming Biden administration.
Look, it's not a conspiracy theory when they put it all out there for you.
It will be a minor miracle if these self-interested, inhumane goblins agree to a stimulus package that's free of legislative poison pills and a brief government shutdown is not out of the question.
I can only hope that voters in Georgia will assess that they will be much worse off if Republicans retain control of the Senate because this is what the next two years will look like if they do. It will be one fiscal crisis of their own making after another with quarterly threats to shut down the government. We know that's what will happen because that's exactly what happened when Republicans controlled Congress under President Obama. It's the only play the GOP knows because they are a permanent opposition party, not a governing party. They couldn't govern even when they controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House.