PlumBirch Culture

A Government Shutdown Looms – The New York Times

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Two basic facts are central to understanding why the federal government may shut down on Sunday morning:

First, the House Republican caucus contains about 20 hard-right members who sometimes support radical measures to get what they want. Many of them refused to certify the 2020 presidential election, for example, and now favor impeaching President Biden. They also tend to support deep cuts to federal spending, and they’re willing to shut down the government as a negotiating tactic. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a fellow Republican — said last week.

Second, the Republicans’ House majority is so slim that McCarthy needs the support of most of these roughly 20 members to remain speaker. If he passes a bill to fund the government and keep it open without support from the hard-right faction, it can retaliate by calling for a new vote on his speakership and potentially firing him. Nobody knows who would then become speaker.

This combination has created a strange situation in Washington. Most House members — along with President Biden — want to avoid a shutdown. So does the Senate: A bipartisan group agreed this week on a spending bill that would keep the government open through mid-November. A similar bill could probably pass the House by a wide margin if it came to the floor.

Yet the small Republican faction has enough sway over McCarthy that he has resisted allowing a vote on such a bill. As a result, much of the federal government may shut down this weekend. The deadline is midnight on Saturday night.

We know that some readers find a potential shutdown to be both a complex and frustrating story. But it’s now a serious enough possibility to deserve some attention.

This conflict has its roots in the debt-limit increase that Congress passed and Biden signed in June. Most countries don’t have a debt limit; they debate taxes and spending when voting on whether to fund government programs. The U.S. government has a two-stage process in which Congress decides first how to spend money and later whether to pay back the debts it has already accumulated.

The more extreme parts of the Republican House membership — “the wrecking-ball caucus,” as Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, has called it — seemed as if they might use the debt-ceiling debate to insist on large spending cuts. They knew that if the U.S. breached its debt limit, a financial crisis could follow.

Ultimately, though, the Republican faction allowed McCarthy to negotiate a fairly normal deal. It cut some forms of spending, like tax enforcement, but only modestly. The deal also included agreements about spending levels over the next two years, meant to avoid future government shutdowns.

For Biden (and most American citizens), the deal’s main benefit was obvious: no economic crisis. For Republicans, the deal also offered the advantage of making McCarthy look like an effective leader who could negotiate on its behalf.

But the right-wing faction came to hate the deal once others began celebrating it. “A lot of hard-right Republicans held their nose and voted for the debt limit increase the first time to give McCarthy negotiating leverage,” Carl says, “and then felt like they were sold out even though everyone in Washington saw what was coming.”

The faction has since decided that it does not need to abide by the earlier spending agreements and wants to renegotiate them by threatening to shut down the government.

Both White House officials and some Senate Republicans are frustrated by the turnabout. “We settled this five months ago with a bipartisan budget agreement — which, by the way, two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted for,” Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, told us last night. If the government shuts down, Zients said, “A million active duty troops and their families could have to worry about how they pay their bills. People could have to worry about fewer food inspectors on the job. Cancer research would stall.”

One obstacle to a solution is that different parts of the Republican group have different demands, as Catie Edmondson, a Times reporter on Capitol Hill, said. Some want to increase spending on border security while cutting other programs. Others acknowledge that they want to weaponize the threat of a shutdown to force major spending cuts. “Most of what we do as a Congress is totally unjustified,” Bob Good, a Republican representative from Virginia, recently told Carl.

The outcome remains uncertain. The Republican faction might ultimately accept small, symbolic spending cuts and claim victory. Or the government might shut down this weekend.

The situation is a reminder that partisan polarization in Washington is not symmetrical. Yes, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on some major issues in recent decades while Republicans have moved significantly to the right. But a large number of only one party’s members — Republicans — is willing to take procedural steps that both parties would once have considered too extreme. It’s true about election certification, the debt ceiling and a government shutdown.

Matt Dallek, a historian at George Washington University, described the rise of this faction as “the fairly logical culmination of an increasingly radical and increasingly extremist Republican Party.”

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  • Donald Trump, who skipped the debate, still had a big presence onstage. Ron DeSantis said he was “missing in action,” while Chris Christie called him “Donald Duck.”

  • Multiple candidates targeted Vivek Ramaswamy, who commanded last month’s debate. “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Nikki Haley said.

  • The debate was often chaotic: Senator Tim Scott falsely claimed that Haley spent lavishly on curtains, and Mike Pence exaggerated his record as vice president. Here’s a fact check.

  • Instead of attending the debate, Trump visited Michigan one day after Biden. He asked for an endorsement from the U.A.W. president.

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  • The union said it would expand its strike against the big three automakers on Friday if substantial progress was not made in contract negotiations.

  • Senator Robert Menendez pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges. Dick Durbin, a leading Senate Democrat, joined the calls for his resignation.

  • The Senate reverted to its decades-old business attire dress code, one week after the rules were relaxed. The standards will now be enforceable.

  • The judge in Trump’s election interference trial rejected his request that she recuse herself.

  • Chinese hackers stole 60,000 emails from State Department accounts earlier this year.

  • Democratic and Republican leaders asked the Supreme Court to overturn lower court decisions that restrict them from removing homeless encampments.

Tradition: In the town of Mountain View, Ark., residents play banjos, forge iron and preserve the Ozark way of life.

New home: North American birds have been spotted in Britain and Ireland after being blown off course by Hurricane Lee.

Lives Lived: Terry Kirkman helped found the Association, a blazer-and-tie-clad vocal group, in 1965. Its lush harmonies and folk-inflected sound made the group a hit machine in its heyday. Kirkman died at 83.

N.B.A. blockbuster: The star point guard Damian Lillard was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he will play alongside the two-time M.V.P. Giannis Antetokounmpo.

An exit: Michigan State fired its football coach, Mel Tucker, saying sexual harassment allegations against him “brought public disrespect” upon the school.

Soccer: The Houston Dynamo beat Inter Miami, 2-1, in the U.S. Open Cup Final. Lionel Messi sat out the game, but is expected to return before the season ends.

Learning the craft: Juilliard, the renowned arts school in New York, is making its graduate acting program tuition-free. School officials hope a broader range of students will apply to the program. “I know too many people who didn’t apply because they thought, ‘I couldn’t afford it,’” Damian Woetzel, the school’s president, said.

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