By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Capitol Weather Gang is calling Monday a 10 out of 10 kind of day. I have to agree with them. The high here will be 79, with the humidity hovering around 34 percent and an expected low of around 50.

It’s camping weather and time to get those fire places working again.

Perhaps members of Congress should step outside and stop fighting for a few minutes. Maybe consume a few cocktails or something.

Inside the Capitol, this was supposed to be a “time of intensity,” according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“This week, we must pass a Continuing Resolution, Build Back Better Act and the BIF,” Pelosi wrote over the weekend.

But Senate Republicans appear to be in a sour political mood, dead set against giving President Joe Biden any kind of a legislative victory, even if that means bankrupting the country and causing a recession.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who the press and Democrats in the Bluegrass State can’t seem to get rid of, indicated he was prepared to block a bill that would fund the U.S. government, provide billions of dollars in hurricane relief and prevent a default on U.S. debts, which The Washington Post called “part of the (Republican) party’s renewed campaign to undermine President Biden’s broader economic agenda.”

So the political strategy seems to be more stiff-armed obstructionism, something the country suffered through for eight years with Obama in the White House.

The House passed the bill last week, so the pressure is on Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia once again to get off his house boat and vote with his party to save the country from defaulting on its debt and a potential “financial calamity,” according to the White House. The president has warned of this “plunging the United States into another recession.”

Republicans say they are not willing to vote for any measure that raises or suspends the debt ceiling, even if that means shutting down the government in the middle of a pandemic. They are justifying this by saying raising the borrowing limit, which allows the country to pay its bills, would enable Biden and his Democratic allies to pursue trillions in additional spending and other policy changes they do not support.

“If they want to tax, borrow, and spend historic sums of money without our input, they’ll have to raise the debt limit without our help,” McConnell said. “This is the reality.”

According to reporting by the Jeff Bezos Washington Post, Democrats have pointed to the fact that the country’s debts predate the current debate, arguing that some of its bills, including a roughly $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package adopted in December, had been racked up on a bipartisan basis.

Democrats also have stressed they had worked with Republicans under President Donald Trump to raise the debt ceiling even when he pursued policies they did not support, including the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Republicans clearly don’t care.

Congress has until Thursday at midnight to pass a plan to fund the government, or else key federal operations will be suspended or begin scaling back by Friday morning. And they must act by mid-October to raise the debt ceiling, or they could risk a financial calamity that could “destabilize global markets.”

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, the Democrat from Greenbelt, Maryland, sent a letter to McConnell on Monday urging him to work with Democrats to address the debt limit.

Will he listen? Probably not.

The letter was signed by 63 House Democrats, all of whom voted to suspend the debt limit under President Trump, when Republicans were unable to pass a suspension of the debt limit on their own.

“Holding the debt limit hostage, as you and forty-five of your Republican Senate colleagues have said you will do, is a dangerous, illogical, and an irresponsible way to express that concern,” Hoyer wrote. “Whatever you think about the policy agenda that the current administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress are pursuing, we know you agree that it would be dangerous malpractice to allow our economy to be unnecessarily crippled by political uncertainty over a possible default on our obligations as a country.

“You said as much as two years ago when you last voted to suspend the debt ceiling,” Hoyer said. “We hope you will do your part – and that you will convince your fellow Republican senators will do theirs – to ensure that our economic recovery can move forward without this brinksmanship.”

See the full letter and the signatories here.

Meanwhile, Pelosi delayed a vote on the infrastructure bill from Monday until Thursday, giving Democrats more time to reach a consensus on President Biden’s massive domestic policy package, according to reporting from the New York Times and other news outlets.

The vote will come just hours before government funding is scheduled to lapse on Oct. 1, leaving lawmakers with a narrow margin for error.

Pelosi had committed to holding a vote on the legislation by Monday, after a group of centrist Democrats threatened to vote against a budget blueprint needed to push through the party’s signature $3.5 trillion social policy and climate change bill — unless they were promised a quick vote on the infrastructure measure, which the Senate passed last month.

But progressive lawmakers have vowed not to support the infrastructure bill until Congress acts on the $3.5 trillion plan to provide vast new investments in education, health, child care, paid leave and climate programs, a package of bills that is not finished or ready for a vote.

Pelosi’s announcement that the House would aim to pass the infrastructure bill later in the week reflected the difficulty of the task facing Democratic Party leaders as they feverishly try to piece together a compromise to move forward with President Biden’s domestic agenda.

“I’m never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn’t have the votes,” Pelosi said of the infrastructure bill Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Biden and his cabinet huddled with lawmakers over the weekend to push the two bills over the finish line, according to White House officials.

Pelosi can only afford to lose three votes for the social policy plan. If it passes on Thursday, Senate Democrats hope to push it through using the fast-track budget reconciliation process to shield it from a filibuster and a mandatory 60-vote majority.

House Republicans, on the other hand, tacking their cue from McConnell, have urged their members to oppose the $1 trillion infrastructure package, so more than a few defections could sink that bill.

House member Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, and the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pledged again on Sunday that liberal lawmakers would not support the infrastructure bill unless it was accompanied by action on the $3.5 trillion plan.

“The speaker is an incredibly good vote counter, and she knows exactly where her caucus stands, and we’ve been really clear on that,” Jayapal said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The votes aren’t there,” she said.

So here we are on a beautiful day in the first full week of fall and the politicians in Washington are threatening to ruin it all with partisan fights and another government shutdown.

Somebody needs to take someone to the political woodshed.

Can someone find McConnell a bottle of Xanax and dissolve a few in his Kentucky Bourbon or something? Maybe he needs to get laid? Surely, with all the money he’s made off his position over the decades, he can afford a high-priced Washington prostitute. And with the Congressional health care plan that covers everything free, surely he can get a prescription for Viagra.

Jesus, if praying to Jesus would do any good, someone should try it.

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