House to House
by digby
Oh goodie. It looks like our next budget standoff is going to be between the House and the Senate:
By a bipartisan vote of 59-36 Friday, Senate Democrats and several Republicans tabled (read: effectively killed) House-passed legislation to fund the federal government beyond September 30. The development escalates a new round of brinkmanship with disaster aid for FEMA and a government shutdown at stake.
Democrats are enraged by a provision of the GOP legislation, which holds disaster aid hostage to partisan budget cuts.
They're also unhappy with the amount of disaster relief money House Republicans included in their bill. Last week, the Senate passed legislation on a bipartisan basis that provided FEMA about twice as much disaster aid as the House bill, without requiring any offsets.
So with FEMA set to run out of funds as early as Monday, and the government set to shutdown in one week, we're at yet another impasse.
[...]
"With FEMA expected to run out of disaster funding as soon as Monday, the only path to getting assistance into the hands of American families immediately is for the Senate to approve the House bill," Boehner said in an official statement Friday morning.
Well, that's not exactly true. The House legislation received only 36 votes in the Senate. As noted above, the Senate passed a stand-alone disaster bill last week, which the House could take up and pass instead of scattering to the four winds.
I can't blame Boehner for doing this. It always seems to work, after all. It will be interesting, however, to see him play it out with the Senate rather than White House. I don't get the sense that McConnell's enjoying this all that much, but I'd never underestimate him. He's the canniest of the bunch.
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