Budget Guy: Paul Ryan has "checked out" and it could mean a shutdown in 2 months

Foe Sunday reading, I wanted to again recommend Stan Collender's writings in "The Budget Guy" blog, and yesterday's entry that illsutrated how "House Republicans are in Almost Total Disarray as Summer Recess Begins."

Collender rightfully notes that House Speaker Paul Ryan has "increasingly checked out" in a time when he needs to get to work, given that there is little time set aside in the House session to get a budget done.

The House only has 11 legislative days left before the start of fiscal 2019 but doesn’t seems to have any agreed-upon plan on how to avoid a government shutdown on October 1 except to hope that Trump doesn’t veto the continuing resolution that will be needed to prevent it....

When the House reconvenes, the GOP plans to devote a significant amount of the limited time it has left before fiscal 2019 begins to three tax cut bills that have no chance of being enacted any time soon because…wait for it…the Republican-controlled Senate has already said it’s not interested.

And none of this even begins to anticipate what the House Republicans who are running for reelection and think they will need to energize the Trump base will do in September as the Manafort trial and Cohen investigations continue and as the Mueller probe moves forward.

In other words, this year’s legislative crunch time is about to get very real but House Republicans have little leadership, no plan, a very divided caucus, are very likely to be distracted and are relying on a notoriously unreliable Donald Trump to do the right thing.

This is almost a textbook definition of political and legislative chaos.

Instead, Collender points out that GOP House members like Jim Jordan (aka "The Biggest disgrace to the UW Athletic Hall of Fame") are spending more time trying to shield President* Trump from the Mueller probe than they are in doing base duties like funding the government. And it's done with a wink and a nod from Ryan, who gives mealy-mouthed "I wish they didn't do that," type responses but does nothing behind the scenes to make those Bagger dimwits stand down and focus the agenda beyond obstructing the rule of law.


Sooo punchable. And sooo incompetent.

Dems should do nothing to bail these dingbats out in the next 3 months. There are plenty of reasons to boot out the Republicans in November, but the incompetence of Paul Ryan and the rest of the House Republicans should be near the top of the list. A government shutdown 5 weeks ahead of the midterms would cement that image of "these clowns don't know what they're doing" into people's minds.