UK: Congressional disfunction continues

The Economist

Threatening shutdown
The shape of things to come
Rows and more rows

THESE days the fact that Congress has staved off disaster for a few weeks passes as good news. As The Economist went to press, the House of Representatives appeared poised to avert a suspension of all but the most vital government services by approving a stopgap budget. But the bill, already passed by the Senate, will only keep the government up and running until mid-November.

Supposedly, the Republican leadership of the House, the Democrats who control the Senate and Barack Obama have already settled their differences over the budget. In a previous melodrama in July, they agreed on an overall spending figure for the coming fiscal year, as part of a deal to raise the limit Congress places on the government’s debts. A few months before that, they resolved yet another spat that would have brought the government to a standstill when they thrashed out a budget for the final part of the fiscal year that ends this week. But many congressmen, both Democratic and Republican, were unhappy with those arrangements, setting the stage for this week’s histrionics.

The act that reopened hostilities was the Senate’s insistence on boosting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s depleted disaster-relief fund by $6.9 billion. There have been lots of natural calamities in America this year, from wildfires in Texas to flooding in Vermont, and FEMA had said it might run out of money to help the victims before the end of the month. That was too much for the Republicans in the House, many of whom think the spending levels agreed in August are too high as it is. They wanted to give FEMA just $3.7 billion, and to pay for even that with cuts to other programmes.

The Senate eventually agreed to a smaller infusion of cash for FEMA, but rejected any talk of offsetting cuts. Many in the Democratic majority, believing that they had conceded too much in August, seemed determined to take a stand. The House leadership, doubtless fearful of seeming doctrinaire and miserly, buckled. It helped when FEMA said it could scrape through the week without more cash, making it unnecessary to revisit the 2011 budget at least. But each new fiscal armistice seems to sow the seeds of further conflict, by stirring revanchism within the ranks. The next battle looms on November 18th, when the latest truce expires. Meanwhile, a bipartisan “supercommittee” is supposed to come up with deep budget-balancing cuts for the medium term by November 23rd. Don’t bank on it.






http://www.economist.com/node/21530987