Shutdown day moves to Tuesday

Today was supposed to be Shutdown Saturday, with authorization to spend money expiring at midnight tonight if Congress didn’t act to either pass a budget or issue another continuing resolution.  Harry Reid gave up his attempt to play chicken with Republicans on Capitol Hill by conceding that his massive omnibus spending bill had no chance of passage.  With time running out last night, Congress passed a three-day continuing resolution in order to get some breathing space to craft a longer extension:

Congress extended a stop-gap spending bill Friday night to keep the government funded through next Tuesday as lawmakers and the White House try to hammer out a longer term answer to the year-end budget crisis.

The action puts to rest fears of a government shutdown over the weekend, when the current continuing resolution was due to expire Saturday night. …

It appears likely now that both parties will settle on a two or three month funding resolution running to March and punting the fight into the next Congress when Republicans will have more power. But that means agencies will remain frozen at 2010 spending levels for close to half the 2011 fiscal year, and some exceptions could be needed, especially for departments like Defense and Homeland Security.

Duane Patterson and I discussed this yesterday during my show, after Duane heard from a source on the Hill that a “minibus” might wind up being offered instead.  The “minibus” would be a blend of continuing resolution and omnibus, funding specific agencies or efforts for the entire year while leaving the rest for the Republicans to budget after January.  Instead of having a mid-February expiration on the CR portion, the new deadline would become mid-March, allowing more time for the GOP to apply a systematic approach for budgeting rather than another omnibus.

However, the critical issue is what the proposal actually funds directly and for the entire FY2011 year.  If it funds agencies without pork, then that’s legitimate.  Democrats could have attempted to push through a real budget in this lame-duck session rather than an omnibus filled with pork-barrel projects, and they would have been able to do so.  If the “minibus” funds DoD and Homeland Security for the fiscal year without porking it up, that shouldn’t be a big problem for the GOP.  If the Democrats and the White House insist on treating it as a Christmas tree with pork ornaments — or especially if they attempt to push ObamaCare funding through full-year HHS funding — they should insist on just a pure CR, even if it means a tighter deadline on the back end.

Keep a close eye on the CR that gets produced over the weekend.  The shenanigans may not yet be over.