UPDATE: Trump just announced his approval of this plan B still no text on our end but given Trump has said go the Republican Party should be good to go. Democrats will be the ones now in a bind due to the voting requirements since Speaker Johnson wont be moving this through Rules requiring a 2/3 vote in favor of.

UPDATE 2: They are going to try and put this on the Floor tonight HUGE move by Leadership

Honestly, depending on what happens over the next few hours, this could end up being a multipart series, but first, let's do a rundown on what got us here. First and foremost, government spending bills are always a nightmare. I mean, some of the initial COVID-related legislation was rather quickly put together and easily passed, but that was when chaos was running through the world, and because the legislation was not thoroughly vetted, a massive amount of fraud took place. A new thing that has become more and more commonplace is instead of passing new or updated government funding bills Congress passes a CR or Continuing Resolution. This essentially says keep spending as spending until X date and this Congress we have passed two of these already and now and going to have to pass a third.

Since the CR has begun being used more and more another key issue has arisen. There are a dozen-plus Members of the Republican Party who vote against a CR no matter what. The reasons for this vary but they often cite that it is bad spending or Congress is not doing its job.... mind you some of these people are those who negotiate the CR package so they get what they want but vote against it to maintain their image.

Another tidbit to add is unlike honestly pretty much every country that comes to mind the US is unique in how the government is structured. Congress is split between the Senate and the House and really only two parties exist (some Members in the Senate will register as Independents but then they turn around and caucas with either the Republicans or Democrats so not really being independent if ya ask me). Unlike other governments like in Europe, there isn't a mechanism to cause Snap elections or votes of no confidence like we have seen in France and Germany recently. This means when you have one party like the Republicans who only control one branch of Congress (the House) they can cause chaos in the flow of legislation and funding. Due to trying to include Republican talking points in legislation and spending the Senate refuses to vote on it and the President sure won't sign it. Next year will be a chance for Republicans to fix their image, especially in the House since they hold the Government Trifecta of holding both the House and Senate as well as the Presidency.

So that was all the background stuff but what you are here for is what the hell is going on.

Knowing that alone Republicans would not pass a CR Speaker Johnson knew he had to work out a deal with Democratic Leadership. Well, Dem Leadership absolutely eviscerated him in what they would accept and so because of this he was stuck with a "bipartisan" CR bill that included several other pieces of legislation that had nothing to do with Government funding. Adding in all of these things that he had to cause the CR bill to explode to 1,500 pages and while that sounds like a lot you have to factor in not only does this deal with the entire government being funded but it included $100 billion in disaster aid, a Farm Bill Extension, an AI bill, and the Frances Scott Key Bridge. Involving all of these parts means you have to amend numerous parts of the existing US Code and thus just adds a bunch of crap that doesn't matter to people when they actually read it. Oh and don't even get me going about the damn formatting of these bills... If they formatted them to use a normal 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper honestly easily 400+ pages would go away.

Now was the CR going to be longer than other CR's? Absolutely because it had all these other bills attached to it essentially combining various bills into one thing to pass through. The number of pages immediately set off red flags though both in Personal Offices and on the internet and once Elon jumped in it exploded the whole thing. For better or worse right now on X you can easily see how people are feeling from across the US and it was clear that this was a huge swing and miss by Speaker Johnson and to some extent Democratic Leader Jefferies. Once President Trump came out against it that was its final death blow.

Due to House Rules (they can be bypassed for legislation it just looks really really bad) a bill's text must be made available to the Public and all Members 72 hours in advance of a vote. Well it's 4 pm and even though they have now announced a new deal there is no text. From the moment the text drops the 72-hour clock starts and well that takes us past the deadline so we (House Leadership) is going to have to disregard the rules to pass this legislation ASAP. With the Senate, that's a whole other story as Sen. Rand Paul has come out and said he wants to filibuster the whole thing which could lead to the Senate dragging it out for an extended period of time. However, this is not likely to fly if Trump gives the thumbs up on this and so maybe there will be a brief interruption to do it but it won't last long or do anything to affect anything ie it'll just be a sideshow.

Also before I hit publish I do want to note that this "agreed" legislation is just with Republicans. To expedite it though the House they will need 2/3 to vote for it meaning Dems will have to buck their party after Dem Leader Jefferies said they would not vote yes on anything but the agreed-upon legislation. It will be a test to him to see if he has the power Nancy Pelosi had on the Democratic Party for over a decade.