Radical Republicans overthrow the budget extension and the US heads towards a government shutdown

The group of radical Republican deputies, the so-called ‘Freedom Caucus’, has fulfilled its threat. As they had already warned, the 21 have overturned the budget extension project presented by their own party as the spending cuts they requested had not been included. A decision that leads the US to suffer a new ‘government shutdown’: From midnight Saturday to Sunday, the federal Administration will run out of funds to pay civil servants and will suspend non-essential services, such as national parks or museums.

This umpteenth crisis occurs again due to the strong internal division of the Republican Party. The conservatives obtained a slim majority of 9 seats in the legislative elections last November, but in practice they have revealed themselves as a minority from which about twenty radicals who refuse to follow voting discipline have broken away. From day one they made their position clear, refusing to vote for the leader of their party, Kevin McCarthy, as president of Congress for 15 eternal votes. And today they have unleashed the first crisis at the national level.

All this despite the fact that McCarthy had refused to put the bipartisan budget extension project to a vote approved by a large majority in the Senate, based on the agreement reached by both parties in May to prevent the country from declaring itself in suspension of payments. Instead, the Republican leader presented a partisan proposal, with even harsher cuts than those initially agreed upon, with the aim of satisfying these radicals and opening a second round of negotiations with the threat of a crisis on the table.

The Freedom Caucus demands approving the budgets item by item, up to a total of 12 separate laws, instead of a joint text of thousands of pages, as has been done. However, the insistence on approving even deeper cuts than those negotiated has led to the defeat of the first of those 12 laws, overturned by the radicals themselves. And, at this point, There is neither time nor hope that all these projects can be approved.

Opposite, Democrats and Republican senators have insisted that the budgets agreed upon by the leaders of both parties in June are approved. But McCarthy fears that if he brings those budgets to a vote in Congress, he will unleash an internal rebellion that will end with a vote of no confidence. So the president of Congress finds himself paralyzed and turned into a kind of legislative ‘dog in the manger’: incapable of approving anything with his own votes alone and afraid of putting to a vote a bipartisan project that could mean the end of the political career of he.

Plan B’

On the table is the possibility that five Republican deputies sign, together with Democrats, a petition to take control of the agenda and bring the bipartisan project to a vote bypassing McCarthy, who could wash his hands of it. At the moment only one Republican has shown himself willing to sign, given the widespread fear that former President Donald Trump, in favor of closing the Government, will launch a campaign against the re-election of the deputies who join.

Until now, The record for the longest government shutdown is held by Trump, which took 35 days in approving budgets in 2019. At that time it was the president himself who refused to sign the agreement, saying that he was willing to assume the political cost of doing so. The question is how much this could extend.