After a stressful, fractious and at times terrifying 2021, rarely has the congressional community more desperately needed a nice long holiday respite far from the toxic funk of Washington.
Better luck next year. Congress originally planned on wrapping up its Washington business around Dec. 10. Instead, lawmakers and staff members rolled into this month with a pile of must-do items still to tackle: pass the annual defense authorization bill, continue funding the government, prevent a default on the national debt and make at least some progress on President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
With obstruction-happy Republicans working to slow progress, Congress’s hopes for fleeing town soon are disappearing faster than cheap wine at a House staff party. Schedules are being adjusted. Travel plans are being tweaked. Pat Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already bought a Christmas tree for his place in Washington in anticipation of having to stay in town through the season.
Hill denizens are looking forward to nights and weekends trapped together in the Capitol complex, eating bad takeout and squabbling over policy minutiae and procedural arcana. How festive is that?
It may sound Grinchy, but lawmakers have only themselves to blame for this unmerry state of affairs. This is what happens when Congress operates through brinkmanship, blackmail and punting.
As you may have noticed, lawmakers can’t seem to get much done absent a hard deadline. Only under the imminent threat of, say, a government shutdown can they push past their partisan games to fulfill their most basic legislative obligations. Even then they often resort to temporary fixes, requiring them to fight the same fights again and again — each time putting the nation at risk for painful fallout if something goes sideways.
And things can all too easily go sideways. In 2011, Congress’s mere threat of a debt default prompted the first ever downgrading of America’s credit rating. In December 2018, President Donald Trump’s feud with Congress over its refusal to fund his border wall prompted a partial government shutdown that stretched deep into the next month.
This kind of instability is bad for everyone. Yet here we are again, waiting to see if Congress can do its job with the minimal competence necessary to avert chaos.
The deadline for avoiding a government shutdown this time is midnight Friday. This issue was supposed to have been handled in September, but the best lawmakers could manage was a short-term continuing resolution that kept things running at existing spending levels. Some two months later, they are pursuing yet another temporary fix. On Thursday, the House passed a continuing resolution that would last through Feb. 18. But heading into Friday, a coterie of Senate conservatives was still threatening to jam things up and force a mini-shutdown unless Congress defunded President Biden’s vaccine mandate for the private sector.
At the same time, the National Defense Authorization Act has been on a slow track in the Senate. The House passed its version of the bill in late September, and lawmakers from both parties have been frustrated with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, over delays in his chamber. Of course, as the year winds down, Republican members are increasingly eager to make mischief. On Monday, a group of Republican senators blockaded the legislation, demanding that their pet amendments receive further consideration. Several Republicans sank an earlier deal on amendments just before the Thanksgiving recess.
Congress has managed to pass this crucial bill for each of the past 60 years. No one seriously expects it to fail this time — even Republicans love military spending — but the foot-dragging is complicating the chamber’s already precarious schedule.
As potentially damaging as these fights are, they pale next to the insanity of the debt-ceiling standoff. Without a bump in the borrowing cap, the government risks a default midmonth. Congress should have dispatched this issue in October but, again, could manage only a short-term patch.
Republicans’ refusal to help raise the borrowing limit is cynical, dishonest and dangerous. It is also nothing new. Democrats need to stop getting sucked into this recurring game of chicken and start pushing to abolish the debt ceiling altogether — a position that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has endorsed. Congress goes on the naughty list for even flirting with such a disaster.
Surveying the scene, it’s hard to see how the Senate gets around to passing the Build Back Better bill before Christmas, as Mr. Schumer has set as the goal. But if lawmakers are sticking around town indefinitely, who knows? It is, after all, the season of miracles.
In the current political climate, it is perhaps too much to expect lawmakers to approach their basic legislative duties more rationally — to strive to avoid and ameliorate crises rather than generate new ones. But if they are going to keep putting the nation through unnecessary, even manufactured dramas, then, yeah, they deserve to spend the holidays toiling over all the stuff they should have gotten done earlier.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
