Kabuki!

I went to bed last night assuming the alt aggregators would provide a full update of the events surrounding the potential government shutdown, but of course they didn't. Only one or two mentioned that the Senate passed the new House Plan C version and sent it on to Biden for signature, which appears to be a formality, the main issue being getting Joe in shape to do much of anything. But where did things stand when I went to bed?

As of noon yesterday, Leader Schumer was claiming he wasn't on board with anything:

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) addressed the looming government shutdown on Friday and urged House Republicans to return to the initial deal negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

“If Republicans do not work with Democrats in a bipartisan way, very soon, the government will shut down at midnight. It’s time to go back to the original agreement we had just a few days ago. It’s time for that,” Schumer said, referring to the continuing resolution negotiated and agreed on by both the leaders of the House and Senate. President-elect Donald Trump followed Elon Musk’s lead earlier in the week in criticizing the deal, which eventually led to Johnson rescinding the proposal.

Eventually the Houise passed a slimmed-down version of the original that left out much of the pork spending, but

Its passage presented only a partial win for Trump as it excluded a provision he sought to suspend the debt limit, which would have permitted him to avoid a contentious fight in the legislature during his term.

. . . The Friday vote saw the House approve a 118-page version of the bill, without the debt limit increase that Trump demanded. It needed two-thirds support to clear the lower chamber and the final tally was 366 in favor and 34 opposed. Democrats crossed the aisle to put the bill over the two-thirds threshold and overcame Republican opposition.

. . . The upper chamber ultimately voted early Saturday morning to approve the bill by an 85-11 margin.

Wait -- I thought Schumer was going to stand on principle and demand the House pass the original CR! Not a bit of it, the whole thing passed by comnfortable supermajorities, Democrats on board. Doesn't this suggest the fix was in much earlier, and the events of the past few days were largely kabuki? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse outlined the main issue yesterday before the Plan C bill passed:

Unbeknownst to most, the debt ceiling was suspended in Jun of 2023. As a result, Joe Biden and congress could spend on Ukraine without worry about the debt ceiling being a hurdle. The UniParty suspended the debt ceiling with a purpose.

Starting Jan 1st, 2025, the debt ceiling issue is scheduled to return. National debt will be whatever it was when the debt ceiling was suspended plus whatever spending Biden and the UniParty did since June of 2023. A new debt ceiling is estimated to be hit by June of 2025 or earlier.

President Trump told Speaker Mike Johnson -using the CR as a vehicle- to push the restart of the debt ceiling back for 2 years. This would allow for continuance of the tax cuts that President Trump wants to make; plus, economic drivers like no tax on tips, no tax on social security, no tax on overtime, a 15% tax bracket for companies who build, invest and manufacture in the USA. Expanding the economy is the goal.

As I write this, there's been no public reaction from Trump or Musk. The Democrat view appears to be that it was "better than a shutdown":

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to a question on if he thinks the government funding bill is an overall win by stating that it’s better than a shutdown and the funding bill that was voted down on Thursday, and “given where we were, this was probably the best possible solution. But, of course, it was not what we had agreed to, originally. There were six weeks of arduous negotiation and then bipartisan agreement to a deal that got blown up by a tweet.”

The implication there would be that the public relations impact of a shutdown would go overwhelmingly against the Democrats, who in the end voted more enthusiastically for the Plan C deal in the House than the Republicans. By the same token, Schumer's demand earlier in the day to return to the original CR was empty noise. According to the BBC:

Republicans, in a closed-door meeting earlier on Friday, reportedly agreed to raise the debt limit without Democratic help sometime next year, before the US Treasury hits the current cap. In doing so, however, they also agreed to accompany that move with trillions in spending cuts – from a pot of "mandatory" spending that includes government-run health insurance, veterans benefits, government pensions and food aid to the poor.

Who won? For now, the subtext appears to be that the Democrats were afraid of being blamed for a shutdown and got what they felt was the best deal they could. Schumer's brief threat to hold out for the original CR was empty. And the "six weeks of arduous negotiations" turned out to be a useless excercise when Trump wouldn't go along.

So far, the lack of tweets from Musk or truths from Trump suggests they aren't all that dissatisfied with the outcome -- if they were. we'd definitely hear about it.