Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Greenbelt, Maryland (second from left) with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol as she signed legislation to end the #TrumpShutdown in 2019: Facebook

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American people can utter a brief sigh of relief this weekend as President Joe Biden signed a spending bill Thursday night that prevents a shutdown of the federal government, extending funding through early December.

The bad news is we will all have to live through this threat again in two months, just in time for the Christmas-New Years Congressional recess.

“Ho, ho, ho,” right?

The Senate passed the budget reconciliation bill by a vote of 65 to 35, which included emergency aid to refugees from Afghanistan and disaster relief for states devastated by hurricanes, floods and wildfires. Then the House passed the measure 254 to 175.

Shortly before 11 p.m., after that bill was passed and sent to the president for his signature, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland — the second-ranking Democrat in the House — announced that “no further votes are expected tonight,” an acknowledgment that the party did not have the votes to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill already passed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate last month.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been insisting throughout the week that the vote would take place.

“It was one of the few times in her almost two decades as the leader of House Democrats that she did not appear to be in control of her caucus,” The New York Times reported in its Friday morning email.

Democrats take very seriously their obligation to govern “for The People,” Hoyer said in a statement issued Thursday night, “and that means keeping government open.”

“Last week, we held true to that commitment by passing a continuing resolution in the House to keep the government funded into December. Senate Republicans rejected that resolution and voted to shut down the government because they opposed the provision we had included to suspend the debt limit and prevent a catastrophic default. That was unfortunate, because such a default would bring economic hardship to American workers and their families, and it would hamstring businesses trying to recover from the pandemic,” he said.

“The Senate passed a clean bill to keep the government open through December 3, and the House has now done the same, over the objections of many House Republicans who voted to shut down the government and reject emergency assistance for our Afghan allies and for Americans impacted by Hurricane Ida and wildfires,” he said. “While the immediate threat of a shutdown has ended, the appropriations process must continue toward its successful conclusion over the next nine weeks.”

Meanwhile, the leftist, pro-labor news site In These Times put out a story under the headline: “The Budget Fight Isn’t Really About Progressives Vs. Moderates: Don’t believe misleading media coverage of the standoff in Congress. Here’s what’s actually going on.”

The lede?

“It’s crunch time for the Biden Budget, and likely for the future of the Biden administration, Democratic control of Congress, the fate of American democracy and hope for the world. No pressure!”

“We tend to see political issues in ideological terms of Left versus Right, but in this situation that really gives too much credit to those throwing sand in the gears,” writes Max Sawicky, a senior research fellow at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. He has worked at the Economic Policy Institute and the Government Accountability Office, and has written for numerous progressive outlets over the years, according to his bio.

“President Biden’s budget legislation is currently hanging fire in the Congress,” he writes.

One piece is a bipartisan bill to finance public investment in physical capital, also known as infrastructure. It, of course is stalled at the moment, although a vote could come on Friday or next week, according to The New York Times and other news outlets.

The other  piece of legislation being debated is a budget bill, which if passed by the Democrats in the House, could potentially pass the Senate with no Republican votes under the process known as budget reconciliation, which is exempt from a filibuster and does not require a mandatory super majority of 60 votes.

This bill is the product of Independent Senator Bernie Sanders’ budget committee, and it provides a massive progressive expansion of social spending on human needs like health care and Green, New Deal style initiatives to fight climate change.

“Originally there was an agreement among Democrats that both bills would be passed together. Now, a rump group of Members of Congress wants to pass their preferred bipartisan bill first, threatening to derail the bipartisan, jobs creating infrastructure bill,” Sawicky writes.

“And as for the public, the time is now to demand that the entire Democratic caucus get in line to pass life-changing social programs. Raise hell, protest and voice your displeasure at the holdouts. And if they stand firm in their disloyalty to the Democratic Party’s agenda, then throw the bums out when primary time rolls around.”

That’s easy to say, but not so easy to take, considering the stakes.

As I wrote on Wednesday, if Republicans take back control of both the House and Senate in 2022, that paves the way for Donald Trump to potentially take back the White House in 2024, which would probably mean the end of American democracy as we know it and certainly turn the Supreme Court into the all conservative, pro-big business court the Federalist Society wants.

What’s Your Survival Plan if Democrats Can’t Govern and the Trump Republicans Return to Power?

The two biggest holdouts among the Democrats to progress are still in the Senate, Joe “Big Coal” Manchin of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a biomedical engineer from Phoenix. At one time she was a school social worker and Green Party activist. But she vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats

Apparently she is trying to use the “Maverick” political playbook of John McCain, the Vietnam war prisoner and Republican senator who died in 2018, to court independent voters and moderate suburban women, as well as big campaign money from corporations and lobbyists.

But she now faces a growing political revolt at home from the voters who once counted themselves among her most devoted supporters, fervent Democrats who now see her as an obstructionist whose refusal to sign on to a major social policy and climate change bill imperil’s the president’s and the party’s agenda.

There is still some hope that Democrats will get it together and pass these bills and show the people they can govern. But time is running out.