[Mike McKenna is a long-time analyst/advisor/polling professional in Washington, DC. Also a former Trump staffer, he currently writes op/eds for the Washington Times, The Daily Caller and other publications. He sends out comprehensive state-of-play reports to a select email distribution, and allows me to share them with paid subscribers here.]
From: Michael McKenna
Date: August 16, 2023
Re: August 2023 Monthly Note
I know people need to write their “what’s going to happen the rest of the year” memo for their clients and bosses, so let’s get right to it.
Shutdown
We are likely heading towards at least one shutdown and an omnibus.
Considering that upon their return the House will have three weeks and the Senate will have four weeks until the end of the fiscal year, and that neither body has passed all of their appropriations bills, it seems more likely than not that October 1st will come and go without appropriations legislation for the new fiscal year being signed into law.
While a temporary continuing resolution (perhaps a 75-day extension until mid-December) is likely, the Republicans’ narrow majority margin in the House, combined with residual anger on the right over the debt ceiling deal, makes even something as straightforward as that problematic. That anger is unlikely to be dissipated by the competing visions of appropriations, in which the Senate is likely to insist on more cash and spending provisions without any attending policy proscriptions while the House has a host of policy preferences (including reduced spending) they wish to enact in appropriations.
We have already seen this in the consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act, in which the Senate produced legislation (authorizing $886 billion in defense spending for FY 2024) without any extraneous provisions, while the House authorized the same amount, but included numerous tangential provisions.