Rep. Jamie Comer has a well-earned reputation for being a nitwit. Having embarrassed himself directing a never-ending series of worthless, politically-charged probes as chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, all aimed at opposition Democrats, of course, the Republican from, well, your guess is as good as mine, knows who to blame for the current forced shutdown of the federal government, a calamity that shows little prospect of ending anytime soon.
Jamie used X, the social media site, on Monday to repost a declaration from the congressional panel he leads that places full blame for dimming the lights on the Democrats.
“Americans DENIED Democrats their big government spending last November,’’ it read. “Now they want to hold YOU hostage with YOUR OWN MONEY unless they get their almost $1.5 TRILLION wishlist of WOKE RADICAL SPENDING. We will fight to keep the government OPEN. STOP THE DEMOCRAT SHUTDOWN.’’
How nice. Too bad it’s all horse manure. More on that later. The post even apes the habit of Jamie’s golden calf, President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, for capitalizing words and phrases FOR NO APPARENT REASON.
Anyway, Jamie is a latecomer to the goal of removing the “Closed ‘Til Further Notice’’ sign off the front door of the Capitol building. During the most recent governmental shutdown owed to the inability of Congress to adopt a budget and, thus, lose the wherewithal to pay the republic’s bills, House and Senate negotiators arrived at a compromise titled the Consolidated Appropriations Act. 2019, ending the 35-day hiatus.
It passed the House 241-190. And guess who voted against reopening the government’s doors – one James Richardson Comer Jr.
He wasn’t alone. In fact, every Republican in the Kentucky House delegation opposed the package that reopened the government and funded its operations until the end of the 2019 fiscal year. Had Jamie and his cohorts succeeded in keeping the doors shut the nation might still be stumbling along without a government, although, given current circumstances, that might have proved advantageous.
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, perhaps the nation’s most desperate man as he rabidly seeks an open seat in the U.S. Senate, was also on hand to vote to keep the government closed. But now, as he posted on X:
“If (Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York) shuts down the government, it’s because the far-left socialists now run the Democrat Party. I’ve been the Dems’ worst nightmare in Kentucky—beating their candidates bankrolled by millions from NY & California — and I’ll be Schumer’s biggest nightmare in the Senate.’’
Andy is too modest. He is already everyone’s biggest nightmare everywhere.
But I digress.
In a separate post, Barr said the shutdown “is BAD for our military, veterans, and families.’’
What, it wasn’t bad for them when you voted against reopening the government after 35 days in 2019?
All of this, of course, is part of the GOP effort to convince the public that responsibility for the shutdown rests solely on the shoulders of congressional Democrats, and the always sincere Republicans are just looking for a way to keep the ball rolling.
Circumstances paint a different picture.
Let’s agree that neither side is blameless for this incredible mess known jokingly as the federal government’s budget process. For most of its history, despite bumps in the road inherent in developing a complicated spending package, Congress managed to put plans together in time for the onset of the fiscal year. But the days of Lyndon Johnson sitting with Everett Dirkson over bourbon and branch water to iron things out is long gone. Neither side in the majority these days shows any interest in compromise, which, in the present case, is vitally necessary.
The current budgetary system was implemented through the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, passed during the Watergate era in an effort for congress to reclaim the power of the purse and address President Richard Nixon’s practice of refusing to spend appropriated funds, a process known as impoundment.
The system carries a lot of requirements and deadlines that, given we’re talking about the federal government here, no one pays attention to. The president, for instance, is supposed to submit a budget by the first Monday in February and the House is supposed to complete work on the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government by June 30, providing plenty of room for adopting a budget in time for the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
This whole thing is a big joke. The president sometimes hits the deadline, sometimes he doesn’t, all according to his mood. Congress hasn’t passed all 12 appropriations measures before the beginning of the subsequent fiscal year since, get this, 1997. In fact, since 1997, Congress has failed to pass more than five of the 12 appropriations measures by the deadline. In 13 of the past 15 fiscal years, including the current 2026 FY, Congress failed to pass any appropriations bill by Oct. 1.
What your left with is continuing resolutions, which extends the deadline for adopting a spending plan, usually by simply maintaining the budget already in place. Then there is use of an omnibus resolution when Congress, desperate to get a package done, simply rolls the appropriations into one, big bill with few individuals truly knowledgeable about what it contains.
And then, when time runs out and there is no CR or omnibus to fall back on, we are presented with our current predicament, the shutdown.
Since adoption of the 1974 budget law, the federal government has been padlocked an astounding 21 times for varying lengths of time. The longest was the previously mentioned 2018-19 for the 2019 FY of 35 days, with the delay attributed to congressional reluctance to spend billions of dollars on Trump’s border wall. He finally caved. The Congressional Budget Office determined that closure cost the economy about $3 billion.
The current stoppage starts with the inability of the House and Senate to develop a spending plan that would pass muster. A continuing resolution to maintain governmental operations until Nov. 21 passed the House on Sept. 19 in a 217-212 vote, generally split along party lines. But it has stalled in the Senate, and there’s the rub.
One might look at the current make-up of the federal government, with Republicans controlling the House, Senate, White House and, if I may be presumptuous, the Supreme Court, and conclude the party has failed in its mission. Utterly. The GOP would reply those nasty old Democrats are holding up the works, initiating a filibuster requiring 60 votes to overcome. There are only 53 Republicans in the upper chamber.
That analysis fails to take several factors into account. Republicans have refused to negotiate with Democrats even though both chambers are closely divided, thus establishing an impediment to any compromise. In fact, the House has adjourned and left town.
The Democrats have demands related to health care. They want the continuing resolution to include a permanent extension of enhanced health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that are due to expire on Dec. 31 and the restoration of about $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts enacted earlier this year under Trump’s so called One Big Beautiful Bill, which included an extension of tax cuts primarily aimed at the wealthy.
And they have good reason. The enhanced subsidies adopted during the presidency of Joe Biden has lowered health insurance costs for 22 million people who obtain their coverage under what is popularly known as Obamacare. It is estimated the average premium would skyrocket by 75 percent, with the average enrollee paying about $700 more per year without the extension. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 4 million people will lose their coverage if the subsidies are allowed to lapse.
The Medicaid cuts, adopted in part to pay for the tax cuts, have been a sore point for months. It’s estimated that 16 million people will lose their health insurance as a result. Democrats are holding out to get the money back.
But Republicans at this point won’t budge and have refused to negotiate. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, perhaps the most incompetent boob in congressional history, maintain the true aim of the Democrat demands is to provide undocumented immigrants with free health insurance.
Writing on X, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on Sept. 26:
“Democrats are going to shut down the federal government and inflict significant pain on American citizens because President Trump won’t force taxpayers to fund free benefits to illegal aliens. Democrats are radical and completely America Last.”
The claim is, in short, a lie, a tactic frequently employed by members of the GOP establishment.
Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to received Medicaid benefits or coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It’s that simple. The proposal includes coverage for about 1.4 million immigrants who are in this country legally. They are not, as the Republicans insist, illegal immigrants.
Rather than negotiate an agreement, Trump, the so-called “dealmaker-in-chief,’’ is vowing to use the shutdown to fire an untold number of federal workers and slice previously approved federal construction projects in Democratic states.
John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio who was a legitimate budget hawk during his time in Congress, and a good guy to boot, recently said on X:
“It really shouldn’t be that difficult to strike a deal between Republicans and Democrats to reopen our government. Compromise isn’t a dirty word. As elected leaders, it’s what you’re expected to do. The voters will reward you. What I’d say to each of them is: Republicans: You’ve already said you’re willing to work on the Obamacare subsidies, just do it now to get a deal done. Democrats: Focus on securing a solution for the subsidies and debate the larger agenda issues during the midterm elections next year.’’
It would be a start.