November 14, 2023 02:01 AM UTC

Blowing Off Boebert: First No Impeachment, Now Another CR?

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: NBC News reports that Democrats are warming to Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution proposal, potentially averting a shutdown at the end of the week and further isolating GOP hardliners like Rep. Lauren Boebert:

After trashing the idea of a two-step strategy to fund the government, House Democrats signaled on Monday they are open to backing Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan, significantly lowering the threat of a painful shutdown at the end of the week…

It’s a remarkable reversal for Democrats. Just four days ago, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., ripped the laddered CR concept, saying neither Democrats nor the American public could understand it.

“The notion of a laddered CR is another extreme, right-wing policy joyride that is reckless and would only crash and burn the federal government,” Jeffries said at his weekly news conference on Thursday. “It’s a nonstarter.”

But Johnson’s proposal, unveiled over the weekend, is a so-called “clean” CR with no spending cuts and no controversial policy riders, a significant concession to Democratic demands.

Surely this must mean war. We’re watching for updates as another of Boebert’s objectives slips away.

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With the federal government headed rapidly toward the next shutdown deadline at the end of this week–time flies, after all, when you’re floundering in chaos for weeks instead of governing–newly-minted Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson floated his first, worst, and guaranteed not final proposal for a “two-step” continuing resolution process to keep the lights on–without addressing a huge number of must-address priorities. As NBC News reports, the “Louisiana Two-Step” is following the predictable arc of a balloon made of lead:

The House is expected to vote as early as Tuesday to give members 72 hours to read the text of the bill, according to two people familiar with matter. The plan does not include budget cuts or aid for Israel.

Under the two-step strategy — which Johnson and others have dubbed a “laddered CR” but which others have likened to a step stool — several spending bills needed to keep the government open would be extended until Jan. 19, while the remaining bills would go on a CR until Feb. 2.

GOP hard-liners had been pushing Johnson to include budget cuts as part of his two-tiered CR plan, a source involved in discussions said. One House Republican, Chip Roy of Texas, quickly voiced his opposition to the bill shortly after it was released…

CBS reports that Johnson’s bills are better understood by what they lack than what they contain:

The bill excludes funding requested by President Biden for Israel, Ukraine and the U.S. border with Mexico. Johnson said separating Mr. Biden’s request for an emergency supplemental bill from the temporary, stopgap measure “places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border.”

Hardline conservatives, usually loathe to support temporary spending measures of any sort, had indicated they would give Johnson some leeway to pass legislation, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to give Congress more time to negotiate a long-term agreement.

In short, Johnson’s proposal doesn’t contain enough to motivate Democrats to get behind it, and the question is whether a half-dozen hardliner Republicans like Rep. Chip Roy can be found to scuttle the effort. In that likely event, Johnson will be under even more pressure to come back with a proposal that can attract Democratic support. If this all sounds eerily familiar, that’s because we just bore witness to the same sequence of events as the previous GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to Democrats to keep the government open and paid for it with his job.

Combined with Johnson’s apparent rejection last week of the high-dudgeon low-information push by the Freedom Caucus to impeach President Joe Biden, Johnson turning to Democrats to keep the government open would seem to set Johnson up for an extremely short term as Speaker of the House if the ouster of McCarthy is any kind of reliable yardstick. For Colorado’s foremost impeachment firebreather Rep. Lauren Boebert, both of these moves by Johnson are grievous offenses –even more so than McCarthy, who at least paid lip service to Boebert’s endless clamoring for impeachment by any means necessary. Boebert was one of the final holdouts who turned McCarthy’s bid for speaker into a 15-round clown show. If Boebert meekly stands aside now while Johnson makes the same deals that ruined McCarthy, it’s an even bigger climb-down from her stated principles.

The alternative is that Boebert turns on the new Speaker, but McCarthy provided the road map to solving that problem. If McCarthy can “buy Boebert’s silence,” we assume Johnson either can or already has.