The Omnibus

 The House has passed and Biden will sign the last budget we will likely see until 2024. The primary objection from Republicans seemed to be that it was - wait for it - too long. Sure, too big, too much money, but they objected to it being too long. It's $1.7 trillion, did they expect it to fit in a Tweet?

The Post notes its past includes many objectives.

With it, lawmakers appended a wide array of other long-stalled legislative proposals — banning TikTok on government devices, helping Americans save for retirement, protecting pregnant workers from discrimination and rethinking the way the country counts electoral votes in the presidential election.

It was noteworthy that AOC and Rashida Tlaib voted against it or abstained respectively. Probably because of the size of the military budget, but that's obviously bloated by the massive amount of material we have and will send to Ukraine. Since we are sending surplus munitions to Ukraine, the bill not only provides direct aid, but it also allows for replenishing what we've shipped overseas. 

The bill also changes the Electoral Vote Count Act to bypass Trump's theories on how to overturn the election. There are also interesting benefits for pregnant women that passed with bipartisan votes in the Senate. In fact, quite a lot of this got votes in the Senate.

Back when he was elected, Biden was criticized for believing he could get Republicans to do anything with Democrats. But the so-called "Silent Congress" has passed quite a lot of legislation. Some of this might be McConnell's realization that breaking the Senate has been part of what created Trump, but I also think there are people, at least in the Senate, who might want to govern a little. I think they take their lead from Romney, frankly, but there are a handful of GOP Senators (only a handful) who want to try and make life better for Americans.

The House GOP?  Eh, not so much.

However, nine Republicans voted for the Omnibus in the House. At first, I was hopeful that this could be a moderating caucus between the Insane Clown Posse Caucus and the Democrats, but looking at the roster of Republicans who actually wanted to govern is sobering.

Here's the list: Liz Cheney, Rodney Davis, Brian Fitzpatrick, Jaime Herrera Butler, Chris Jacobs, John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, Steven Womack. 

The bolded members will not be returning to Congress in January. Only Fitzpatrick and Womack voted for the Omnibus and will be seated in the next session. Any Republican with even a semblance of a desire to actually govern is dead meat when it comes to the GOP caucus.

The question is how many of the new members will want to vote for budgets or even continuing resolutions in the coming years? You need five members to cross party lines, so let's assume - perhaps rashly - that Fitzpatrick and Womack will continue to keep the lights on. Now you need three. There are seven members who were elected by under 3% of the vote, presumably making them look at a tougher re-election landscape in 2024. The three from NY alone should worry about a backlash to the backlash that swept them into office. Who knows what Santos will do.

While it is empirically good that this bill passed and we will keep the government open and fund important programs, we need to understand that we are headed for more "government by tantrum" in the next two years, because the NY Democratic Party doesn't understand how to play hardball politics anymore.