While they will pass a budget, campaign season has shut down the process of the Senate considering appointments for the people who actually do stuff that keeps the government operating properly. So in no particular order, we have
1) a promise to not appoint a replacement for a dead Supreme Court Justice or any lower court Justices;
2) a now 15 month failure by the Senate Banking Committee to approve 16 replacements for positions in the Federal Reserve, the Exim Bank (which can no longer approve loans > $10 mm because of insufficient staff), and the Treasury, where failure includes the approval of the person in the US Treasury overseeing research into terrorist financing; all because a Senator Shelby is afraid of a primary fight. He is 81 and the primary issue his opponent is running on is that he is old (and one could add ineffective). Not running a committee to perform its basic functions would get you fired in the private sector.
3) and I am sure there will be more examples as we move through the Spring.
One can only hope the voters notice. We cannot shut down the government every two years waiting to see who controls the Senate for the next two years.
Meanwhile, I cannot believe that the deep bench of candidates that so many RedState pundits were crowing about 6 months ago have generated a situation where Donald Trump is the most likely person to win the nomination. This is a man who has defaulted on his debts, insults people from all walks of life, has been unfaithful to past wives and lies about any number of other things. And to top it all off, he even insults certain GOP policies of the past.
And the GOP Senators want to entrust future appointments to Trump??? He fires anybody who displeases him, and when you see some of his supporters as I have in some circles, you wonder what rock they crawled out from under.
Oy veh!!!
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