If we were living in more normal times, this news would barely merit a mention. President Joe Biden is reportedly summoning the four top congressional leaders for a meeting to discuss spending bills intended to provide foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel, as well as a larger spending bill needed to avert a potential government shutdown. But these are hardly normal times and the group of leaders is rather lopsided. On the list to be summoned are Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. There is a surprising amount of agreement on the broad strokes of most of these spending priorities, but the Speaker is thus far sticking to his guns and insisting on functional reforms to border security before other spending is considered. A fight appears to be looming. (Associated Press)

President Joe Biden will convene the top four congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to press lawmakers on passing an emergency aid package for Ukraine and Israel, as well as averting a looming government shutdown next month, according to a White House official.

The top four leaders include House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

During the meeting, the president will discuss the “urgency” of passing the aid package, which has bipartisan support, as well as legislation to keep the federal government operating through the end of September, said the White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet publicly confirmed.

The clock is ticking, so the Speaker is likely feeling some pressure at this point. The last stopgap spending bill covering much of the federal government is set to run out on Friday. Separate funding for the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and the State Department will expire a week later on March 8. Up until now, Speaker Johnson has stuck with the conservative wing of the party and insisted that Joe Biden must use his executive authority to close the border before any other spending measures can move forward. 

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that Speaker Johnson had privately told him that he would like to see the foreign aid bill pass. The Senate version passed on a 70-29 vote this month and nearly every Democrat in the House would likely back it (with the potential exception of a couple of Squad members), so pushing it through the House would likely be relatively simple. But it won't go up for a vote without Johnson's stamp of approval.

This latest episode of shutdown theater is a bit more complicated than some of the ones we've witnessed in the past. Typically, when we're faced with a potential government shutdown, both parties bend over backward to blame each other. That's unlikely to change this time if it happens, but unfortunately, the Democrats will have a couple of strong arguments in their favor when trying to convince the public to place the blame on Republicans. Or, more accurately, on one Republican, that being Mike Johnson. They will be able to argue that all of the required spending plans are ready to go and have made it through the Senate and most of the House is prepared to finish the task.

For his part, Speaker Johnson is making a principled stand that is in line with the priorities of the public. Almost all polling currently shows that the Biden border crisis is now the number one concern among voters, exceeding even the economy. He correctly notes that Joe Biden could close the border today by simply restoring all of Trump's border policies via a set of executive orders. But there could be a couple of potential downsides to this maneuver.

First of all, no matter how the proposal is phrased, it would be obvious to everyone that Joe Biden was "restoring Trump's border policies." That would be tantamount to an admission that Biden had made a mistake and that the Bad Orange Man had been right all along. I can't imagine that it's within Joe Biden's character to swallow that large of a slice of humble pie. Further, while I don't want to play into a Democratic talking point, if Biden were to do precisely that, it would probably work. And if the flow of migrants slowed to a trickle, people would probably grow less concerned about it and Biden could point to that as a win in his reelection bid.

I suppose the larger underlying question involved precisely how upset the public would be if a shutdown were to take place. Whenever this has happened in the past, the long-term impacts have been essentially nothing. Congress inevitably cuts a deal to reopen for business and they grant back pay to any federal workers who missed a few paychecks. (The members of Congress miraculously always seem to keep receiving their own pay even when almost nobody else is.) The longest shutdown we've ever had lasted 35 days during the Trump administration and that was also over spending on border control. There are still 252 days to go before the next election. A shutdown of that length seems unthinkable, but this is 2024. We live in an era when all manner of unthinkable things are happening.