By: Alistair Kroon – SeaPRwire – The House just voted 370 to 48 to keep the lights on until December 11. That is not governing. It is buying time until the midterms decide who holds the gavel. Everyone in the room knows the harder bills are still sitting on the table.
The official record is clear. The continuing resolution passed the Senate on August 8. The House cleared it on Tuesday by that lopsided margin. It now goes to President Trump for signature. Federal agencies will not face an immediate shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on October 1. None of the twelve full-year appropriations bills covering homeland security, law enforcement, energy, housing, or defense have been completed. The national debt crossed the 40-trillion-dollar mark last month. Food and housing costs remain high. Tom Cole, the Republican Appropriations chairman from Oklahoma, said the quiet part out loud: the bill gives Congress time to get past the November election.
The real intent sits behind the bipartisan numbers. Neither party wants a fourth partial shutdown hanging over the November 3 midterms. Since the start of Trump’s second term the government has already endured three partial shutdowns lasting a combined 161 days, a record. The earlier fights centered on healthcare subsidies and the scope of federal immigration enforcement. Voters are already angry about inflation, the war involving Iran, and tariffs hitting agriculture. A fresh shutdown would hand the other side free campaign material. Rosa DeLauro, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, framed the vote as Congress reclaiming the power of the purse. She pointed to the administration’s earlier unilateral budget cuts and the dismantling of USAID as the reason the legislative branch needed to reassert itself. The temporary measure contains no structural fixes. It simply moves the deadline roughly fifteen weeks into the future.
After the midterms the calendar turns brutal. Congress will have a short window to write and pass all twelve full-year bills. Control of the next Congress will decide who writes the first drafts and who holds the leverage. The debt clock will still be running. The temporary bill did nothing to slow it. The pendulum now swings on the November results. Parties that treat the December deadline as just another extension will discover the voters have already priced in the next crisis.
Author bio: Alistair Kroon, geopolitical commentator whose columns on legislative brinkmanship and fiscal power regularly appear in major international newspapers.