Hey, look! Appropriations! Not one of those stupid "continuing resolutions" that just makes minor adjustments to the idiocy of the 2011 Budget Control Act and sequestration! Also, I didn't set my kitchen, nor subsequently the entire neighborhood on fire this morning when I made my breakfast omelette! Yay, me!
Bars. Limbo, limbo, lim-BO! Nope, made it over it that time.
Then, of course, we have the firing/resignation/whatever of McMaster. John Bolton is going to be the new National Security Advisor. (What do bomb shelters cost these days?) And Trump is amping up his trade war, so the markets tanked yesterday. His lawyer in the Mueller investigation resigned because, well... most likely, Dowd was telling him not to tweet taunts about Mueller, McCabe etc., and he couldn't do it, so Dowd quit. And then there's McDougal and the upcoming Daniels thing, and, and, and...
So, a few points.
1) In budgetary terms, this isn't really what I'd call, "functional." Functionality would entail the involvement of committee work, CBO scoring and all of that stuff. This last-minute brinksmanship bullshit? Not functional. Also, anything involving Rand Paul is, by definition, not functional. I guess he tried to get the Drama Club back together, but only managed a one-man show. I wonder if Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson will be going through their "goth" phases soon, leaving Rand entirely on his own. Anyway, just because we a) aren't going to have a shutdown, and b) aren't doing a CR, doesn't mean Congress gets a pat on the back for functionality. Besides, haven't a bunch of them been warned about pats on the back and other physical displays?
2) It's this, the tax bill, and nothing else for the rest of the term. And the tax bill was written in an even more haphazard way, making it infinitely exploitable. That's not functionality. We are simply seeing more functionality than shutdowns and CRs. How low can our standards get? Low enough to elect Donald Trump, apparently, which leads to...
3) The obvious comparison is to Trump, and his dysfunction. As bad as Congress is, Trump makes them look positively effectual. Remember, though, that Trump is a product of the same political dysfunction that produced the tea party lunacy that has afflicted Congress since the 2010 election, and the general anti-intellectual, constant partisan warfare mentality that really traces back to Newt Gingrich, and his takeover of the party in 1994. He shut down the government twice in 1995 and 1996.
4) You will continue to hear that the GOP has made a deal to defend Trump because Trump signs Republican bills, like tax cuts. Well, that's done now. They've shot their wad on healthcare, and they failed. A bunch of times. The tax bill passed, so that's done. The omnibus appropriations bill is going through. Congress is done, essentially, through 2018. That's it. They have nothing left, policy-wise. It's time to call bullshit on this argument. Republicans aren't backing Trump in exchange for a tax cut because they already have their tax cut. They could throw him overboard, put Pence in charge, and the tax cut would still be there. Why are they still defending him? The same reason I keep telling you. If they let him burn, it's 1974 and 1976 all over again, but if they circle the wagons, and declare all attacks on Trump to be empty partisanship, then they minimize the electoral damage. That's it. Republican defenses of Trump are all about minimizing the electoral damage of his scandals. Period.