Congress is back from its long summer holiday, and members won’t have much time to get back into the swing of things. That’s because yet ANOTHER government shutdown could be looming if Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on a spending bill by the end of the month, when the current deal expires.
But as Yahoo Finance Columnist Rick Newman reminds us--been there, done that.
“We’re probably going to hear the rhetoric of a shutdown, all these threats,” he notes. “Honestly, don’t Americans just tune it out at this point?”
Still, Newman believes we’re unlikely to have a repeat of what we saw two years ago in October, when disagreement over the funding of Obamacare closed down parts of the federal government for two weeks.
“I think the threat of an actual shutdown is a lot lower than it has been in the past,” he argues. “Part of the reason for that is Republicans now control the Senate and Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader, has been loud and clear in saying ‘We’re in charge of the Senate, we’re going to pass budgets, we’re going to fund the government, we’re going to make things work.’ And if we end up back where we were when the Democrats ran the Senate and just obstructionism, it would look really bad for Republicans, because it would prove they were not able to do what they said they were going to do.”
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Newman adds there’s another reason why a shutdown probably won’t happen.
“That would factor into the presidential campaign, which of course is hot and heavy at this point even though the election isn’t for more than a year,” he explains. “So I don’t think we’re going to see Republicans wanting to shut down the government.”
However, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to have to go through the typical melodrama in Washington.
“You’re going to see all the jockeying, all the last-minute negotiations, down to the wire type stuff,” he suggests. “A lot of bloviating but not much to worry about.”
Newman feels this hardly leads to good governance.
“It’s lowest common denominator politics, which is basically we will pass things we absolutely must pass when we have no other choice,” he says.
But Newman doesn’t think most people really care, anyway.
“As frustrating and infuriating as it is, the economy just kind of keeps humming,” he points out. “So I think Americans might say go ahead, shut it down, we’re used to your antics in Washington and just carry on.”
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