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Now 60% Chance Of A Government Shutdown

This article is more than 8 years old.

The chance of a federal government shutdown increased dramatically and precipitously last week from 40 percent to 60 percent. It’s now more likely than not that a shutdown will result from the craziness going on in Washington.

With the House already in recess until after Labor Day and the Senate about to leave town this week, all of the components that had led to my previous 40 percent estimate got worse. There’s now even less time – Congress will be in session only a handful of days before the fiscal year begins on October 1 – for the House and Senate to devote to appropriations.

The leadership has already admitted that nothing has been decided about how to deal with this situation. In other words, this will be the kind of last minute, ad hoc decision that in the past has repeatedly failed and led to unwanted consequences...like a shutdown. In budget technical terms, the House and Senate leadership will be flying by the seat of its pants.

With the House having passed only six of the fiscal 2016 appropriations and the full Senate having considered none, few of the major program decisions have yet to be made and there won’t be time in September for Congress to make many (or even any) of them,

Add to the lack of time the ever-hardening positions on the key appropriations question of military vs. domestic spending. Congressional Republicans continue to insist that there be more for the Pentagon and less for domestic departments and agencies; House and Senate Democrats continue to demand more for both and are willing to get in the way of legislation that doesn’t do that. It’s not clear at this late point in the year how the continuing resolution that will be needed to keep the government open in the absence of regular appropriations can possibly satisfy both sides.

Meanwhile, the White House keeps promising a veto if the CR has higher military but lower domestic spending, and the threat seems real.

With the first GOP presidential debate about to occur this week and the 17 candidates likely to become increasingly hard-nosed about the budget to appeal to the tea party constituency that will be so important in the primaries, that hardened position will become Republican gospel. GOP congressional leaders will have less ability when Congress returns to convince their members to vote for a short-term CR that doesn’t immediately increase the Pentagon and cut domestic departments.

But the biggest change from last week in the odds of a government shutdown is because of the emergence of the one big thing that has been missing so far from the appropriations debate: a highly emotional, politically toxic and take-no-prisoners issue.

In the past that line-in-the-sand issue has been budget-related: the national debt, the federal deficit and taxes. This time it’s the new GOP push to defund Planned Parenthood – a highly emotional social issue that has quickly become a political litmus test for Republicans.

Republicans are vowing with ever-increasing vehemence to vote against legislation – including a CR -- that includes funding for Planned Parenthood and that means that a continuing resolution that simply extends existing funding at current levels won’t be acceptable to the GOP majorities in the House and Senate. The House and Senate Republican leadership could cobble together a coalition with the moderate members of their own caucus and Democrats, but they would do so by placing themselves and their members in extreme political peril.

This will be more of a problem in the Senate where the four senators running for the GOP presidential nomination will likely fight each other to lead the filibuster that prevents a CR that funds Planned Parenthood from being debated. Given the very little time left before the start of the fiscal year, that filibuster alone could lead to at least a quick shutdown (Fiscal 2016 starts on a Thursday so a short-term shutdown over the two days leading to the weekend plus Saturday and Sunday is certainly possible).

Even if cloture in invoked and the Senate adopts a CR with Planned Parenthood funding, it will still have to be compromised with the continuing resolution that comes from the far more socially conservative House Republican majority that is far less likely to accept it.

In addition, a CR that doesn’t include funding for Planned Parenthood will be filibustered by Senate Democrats.

And the White House has already promised to veto a continuing resolution that cuts funds for Planned Parenthood, and almost no one thinks the votes will exist in either house to override it even if the government closes down as a result.

All of this justifies the increase from 40 percent to 60 percent of the chances of a shutdown this fall. If anything, 60 percent may understate the odds of it actually happening.

Stay tuned.