Congress speedily passed a short-term continuing resolution that won’t do much but pull the nation back from the financial cliff for another week, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for signature, the Washington Post reports.
The CR passed the House by a 320-99 margin, with a bipartisan coalition overcoming far-right GOP objections, while the bill passed the Senate by a 77-13 margin a few hours later. Under the CR, the March 1st funding deadline for several agencies (including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development as well as the Environmental Protection Agency) gets extended a week to March 8th. A separate deadline for funding the rest of the government goes fro March 8th to March 22nd.
These continuing resolutions and Republicans’ inability to govern are two reasons the US credit rating was downgraded by agencies like Fitch and Moody’s. As Moody’s put it last November: “Continued political polarization within US Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability.” In other words, Republicans, your performance art and incompetence are costing us money.