Republicans scramble to clean up their own mess as shutdown deadline nears

As this week got underway, most of the people on Capitol Hill — lawmakers, staffers, congressional reporters, et al. — were confident that members would prevent a government shutdown. As this week nears its end, that confidence is in short supply. NBC News reported:

The day before the deadline did not go as expected. After Republicans abandoned the bipartisan compromise they’d already agreed to, the assumption was that GOP leaders would huddle with Democratic leaders in the hopes of crafting a new agreement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and his team instead chose an alternate course: Republicans negotiated with other Republicans, crafting a deal that not only omitted Democratic priorities that Johnson had already agreed to, but also left Democrats out of the policymaking process altogether — despite the inconvenient fact that Democrats, at least for now, control the Senate and the White House.

This approach failed spectacularly when Democrats, predictably, balked at the GOP-only measure, and when 38 House Republicans rejected their own party’s oddly named “American Relief Act.”

For the beleaguered House speaker, whose future prospects appear rather bleak, it was the second debacle in as many days. Johnson tried to suggest the Democratic minority was to blame for his fiasco, but it was a hilariously unpersuasive argument given this week’s events:

• Republican leaders agreed to a deal with Democrats.
• Republican leaders abandoned their own deal after Elon Musk peddled misinformation about it.
• Republican leaders crafted a new bill without Democratic input and while scrapping Democratic priorities.
• Republican leaders blamed Democrats for choosing not to go along with all of this.

Of course, the developments left the political world with the uncomfortable question of how to avoid a government shutdown with just hours remaining before the deadline.

There’s ample chatter about a possible “Plan C,” though as Thursday’s developments wrapped up, some members of both parties remained focused on “Plan A”: the bipartisan deal unveiled on Tuesday, which remains on the table, and which still hasn’t been brought to the floor for a vote.

For his part, Johnson arrived on Capitol Hill the morning after his latest failure telling reporters that he and his team have a plan, though it’s not yet clear whether that was true. What’s more, if the House speaker is right about having a plan, the Louisiana Republican neglected to share any details about what it might entail.

As for Donald Trump, who endorsed his party’s “Plan B” before its failure, the president-elect began the day with an online missive focused on the American public and those who’d suffer in the event of a shutdown.

No, I’m just kidding. The incoming president actually published an item to his social media platform focused on himself. “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” he wrote, using his own idiosyncratic approach to quotation marks.

I won’t pretend to know what will happen next, though there are several options. House GOP leaders could try again with their doomed “Plan B.” They could bring up “Plan A” for a vote. They could unveil something brand new and hope for the best. They could try talking to Democrats for a change and see if there’s room for a compromise. They could even consider a very brief stopgap measure that would kick the can down the road for a week or two.

Watch this space.