The Spending Bill

Leadership in both parties are scrambling to try to get their members in line behind a spending bill hours ahead of the midnight deadline at which time the government will head for another shutdown:

House Republican leaders are skating on thin ice with the government funding bill, facing stiff opposition from the left and the right that threatens passage just hours before a midnight deadline to avert a shutdown.

...Republicans long expected some opposition from their right flank due to the fact that the $1.1 trillion spending bill doesn't block President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration. What has thrown the plan into chaos is that numerous House Democrats are defecting over extraneous policy provisions that would weaken derivative trading rules on big banks and loosen campaign finance laws. The bill likely will need significant Democratic support to pass.

The Democratic opposition is being led by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (MD) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), who call the bank provision a giveaway to Wall Street.

...The White House came out for the bill after it cleared a test vote in the House by a narrow 214-212 margin earlier on Thursday. It said it objects to the weakening of Wall Street reform but signaled Obama would sign the bill anyway.

A fallback plan Republican leaders are considering is to pass a short-term spending bill for two or three months to maintain the status quo and kick the task to the next Congress.

I love the New York Times' lede on their coverage: "The 113th Congress—one of the least productive on record—found itself scrambling Thursday to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill amid last-minute brinkmanship and bickering that has come to mark one of the capital's most polarized eras."

"Brinkmanship and bickering." What Senator Warren and her progressive allies are doing is ostensibly exactly what we elect our Congressional representatives to do. Warren is objecting to a provision that she believes would change the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in a way that allows "Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money," potentially causing a repeat of the 2008 catastrophic financial disaster.

The Democratic detractors are siding with the people instead of the banks.

Which is only partisan in the sense that most of our elected representatives, whether they've got an R or a D behind their names, are one giant party for the corporations, and Warren et. al. are attempting to be a party for We the People.

But it's fun to pretend it's just a bunch of pointless partisan posturing, I guess.

(It is not fun.)