Far-right House Republicans have brought the country to the brink of a government shutdown, setting the stage for the most direct battle yet between former presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Action packed trips from the capital to battleground states Biden’s ability to once again utilise the instability to bolster his reelection bid will be put to the test in Michigan during this crucial week, as residents recall how radicalism rocked democratic institutions during the ex-president’s difficult term.
The government could run out of money at midnight Saturday as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy struggles to control a burn-it-down faction in his majority. The rebels are holding funding hostage as they demand massive expenditure cutbacks from a Senate and White House currently controlled by Democrats.
To further his political ambitions as the likely Republican nominee for president in 2024, Trump is stirring up his base of support by encouraging them to shut down the federal government “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING”
While the iconic American auto industry is paralysed by a strike, hundreds of miles away in Michigan, Biden and Trump will ramp up their notional general election campaign in an early struggle over blue-collar Midwestern voters. Because of his promises to revolutionise the auto sector with electric vehicles, Biden’s longstanding backing for union employees seeking salary raises was exposed during the shutdown. The confrontation was started by Trump, who opposes plans for a low carbon economy to combat climate change, by booking a visit to the striking employees on Wednesday, the same night that other GOP hopefuls will be debating. The former president’s campaign is running a radio ad in which they say he has always supported the auto workers, despite the fact that the United Auto Workers union has said a second Trump term would be disastrous for the union.
Trump’s trip was first criticised by the Biden campaign as a “self-serving photo op.” However, Biden later said that he will join Trump in Michigan for the historic picket line walk a day earlier. After days of negative press about the president’s age, and with new polls out Sunday showing him in a theoretical dead heat with Trump in November 2024 due to voter dissatisfaction with his management of the economy, the move is a show of political dexterity on the part of Biden’s team. In 2020, Michigan will once again play a pivotal role in the general election. Trump won the state in 2016, but Biden swayed it back to the Democratic column.
The drama in Michigan will overshadow the second Republican debate, which has devolved into a fight for a distant second place in the election due to Trump’s large polling advantage and reluctance to participate. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will look to expand on her strong showing in the first debate last month in Wisconsin, while incumbent Florida governor Ron DeSantis faces mounting pressure to resuscitate his flagging campaign. It’s ironic that the ceremony will being held in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, considering how many Republicans have abandoned the party’s conservative roots in favour of Trump’s authoritarianism.
The House GOP is a perfect example of this mentality as they prepare to convene the first impeachment hearing into Biden this Thursday while also threatening a government shutdown at the end of the week. This juxtaposition is likely to amplify claims that the GOP is using impeachment to try to damage the president before the election and to mitigate the historic stain of Trump’s double impeachments and quadruple criminal indictments, despite the fact that they have yet to show any evidence that Biden is guilty of bribery, treason, or high crimes and other misdemeanours. Even while the GOP has yet to prove that the president directly benefited from the transactions, the process might increase public scepticism over Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling, which has created the image of a conflict of interest.
The shocking corruption indictment of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this week offered the GOP additional fodder for allegations that alleged illegalities reach far wider than Trump, and has given the Democrats yet another ethical difficulty.
The government is rapidly approaching a shutdown, and there are no obvious ways out.
The standoff in the House demonstrates that the growing infighting among Republicans poses a threat to national stability. Indeed, that may be desired for Trump supporters who despise what they regard as an oppressive administrative state or who prefer dysfunction and economic turmoil in the hopes that it will harm the presidency of Joe Biden and help Trump’s return to power.
After a week of legislative mayhem revealed the vulnerability of McCarthy’s speakership like never before, he sent his members home until Tuesday, despite the fact that most of the government will grind to a halt at midnight on Saturday unless Congress approves legislation to pay it. The Republican from California has been seeking to get a continuing resolution passed to keep the government running while a permanent financing solution is found. However, his conference’s hardliners, such as debt hawks and others plotting to remove the speaker, are not budging. They want far more drastic cuts in expenditure than were part of an agreement McCarthy and Biden made earlier this year to prevent a devastating debt default. Some people are calling for the United States to stop aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Not only has McCarthy not proposed a short-term budget solution, but he also failed twice last week to approve a defence spending package that typically enjoys widespread support.
A alliance of moderate Republicans, who fear a shutdown might lose them votes and the GOP majority next year, and Democrats to support a temporary budget package would be one way out of the dilemma. Conservative Republicans, though, have threatened to vote McCarthy out of office if he permits this scenario to play out. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told AWN’s Dana Bash, “That’s something I’d look strongly at, ma’am, if we do away with our duty that we said we’re going to do.”
McCarthy’s response to the impasse has been to throw spaghetti against the wall in an attempt to revive a temporary bill and to generate momentum by raising a number of the crucial year-end spending bills funding different departments, the passage of which would normally require months of intricate negotiating. However, even if he were to implement any of these key reforms, it would not be enough to prevent a shutdown. Moreover, even a temporary solution that he could enact with the GOP’s slim majority would probably die after he took office in the Senate and the White House.
