Congressional Republicans are still holding hostages. Will Obama deal?

Congress is scheduled to be in recess from next week until September 5.  When they get back, they will have only 25 days to authorize spending for the new fiscal year beginning October 1.  Stan Collender expects Republicans to use the same terrorist tactics they did over the debt ceiling bill: 

Fiscal 2011 ends Sept. 30 and, given the current state of the fiscal 2012 appropriations debate, that almost certainly means a government shutdown will be threatened over the funding level for a continuing resolution.

Yes, the debt ceiling deal includes spending caps that, in theory, should make a CR easier to enact. But, especially in the House, a cap will be taken by some as just an upper limit rather than an agreed-upon amount that doesn’t require any further changes. As a result, the CR debate will be neither quick nor simple, with tea partyers pushing for spending reductions for fiscal 2012 beyond those in the deal.

What could make matters worse is that the CR might not — or probably won’t — be for a full year. Less than 24 hours after the debt ceiling agreement was announced, the GOP leadership apparently was using the prospect of a series of short-term continuing resolutions with additional spending cuts on each as one of the inducements to convince tea partyers to vote for the debt ceiling deal.

Update on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 10:38AM by Skeptic

While waiting to go on Larry Kudlow’s show August 1, Jared Bernstein heard Sen Mitch McConnell say:

“What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step.  This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order.”

The question is whether McConnell and his GOP colleagues will see an important difference between a debt ceiling vote and a vote on a continuing resolution to keep government operating while budget negotiations are pending. I doubt it.