What’s next for the US Congress, Trump, Mike Johnson — and Ukraine

Congress killed the six-month budget deal last week. While technically lawmakers only killed its pairing with the SAVE Act, the reality is that they killed the House Republicans’ momentum and leverage with it.

Inaction is not a palatable option at this point, and the government “shuts down” seven days from now, at midnight. So what’s next? For now, a short-term continuing resolution that will fund the government for three months.

This is all but assured, because it allows Congress to kick hard decisions into the future.

You know when you tell a child that his bad behavior before he goes to school means no dessert that night and it doesn’t faze him because that’s basically an eternity away? That child is Congress. Three months is after the election, so it might as well never come, and by then it's almost Christmas anyway.

Trump isn’t all aboard the forever war train to Ukraine, and in Washington, that simply will not do. So they’re going to try to lock him in.

No one is going to shut down the government over a spending fight in December. Sure, it’s literally as far as you can possibly be from an election, in a country that forgets about assassination attempts in two weeks, but the holidays are coming. Everyone wants to get out of town, and no one wants to cut off Social Security checks. So they’ll make a deal.

You’d think this could be an opportunity for another CR, to allow the incoming administration some semblance of control over its own policies in the first year, but that would mean Republicans fighting for it — and overcoming the Pentagon boys who want a massive, disgusting omnibus.

In reality, most politicians want a massive, disgusting omnibus. It’s a special little Christmas for them, ripe with all kinds of perks, presents, and carve-outs. But more than that, it allows Congress to set the first year or more of the next administration’s foreign policy. If former President Donald Trump wins in November, this will be a top priority for the uniparty.

If Trump wins the White House, you can expect him to want to negotiate his own foreign policy. Basic respect for the office would allow for that. But Trump isn’t all aboard the forever war train to Ukraine, and in Washington, that simply will not do. So they’re going to try to lock him in.

How? With a massive, disgusting omnibus, of course.

The Pentagon lovers want this. Neocon radio host Hugh Hewitt even said it out loud, lauding the spending vehicle on his Friday morning show and crowing that it would get us ready for war next year. War next year? He actually said that. And Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agrees wholeheartedly.

McConnell has staked his legacy on the war in Ukraine. Even after he finally retires from leadership this fall, he plans to stay in the Senate fighting for this. What better way to lock Trump into it than an omnibus that allocates billions to the war over the first 10 months of his administration? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill this summer mandating a decade-long commitment to the war. Ten years. This man is one of the chief enablers of Iraq and Afghanistan. But politicians have no shame, and if the bill sneaks into the omnibus, it could gain bipartisan support.

While Congress has generally given up on even passing laws, preferring instead to send vague instructions to the executive branch, lawmakers still jealously guard appropriations. Remember: They impeached President Trump once before over shaking Ukraine’s piggy bank.

And who cares what Democrats load on in exchange for the war money? Sure, they already agree with it all, but they’re better negotiators, so they’ll get to sweeten the pot anyway. And that’s where Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) comes in.

Johnson is doing all right politically, which is amazing considering how terrible a job he’s done. Yes, he’s isolated, but Republicans are still smarting from the last big brouhaha, and there’s not a lot of appetite to do all that again.

The general feeling is that if Trump wins and Republicans keep or expand their majority in the House, he keeps his job. Even then, the future hinges on the omnibus. If it gets so massive and so disgusting that Johnson needs to pass it with more Democrat votes than Republicans, then he could be in trouble.

As we’ve seen, it doesn’t take much to throw the House into disarray these days. And as we saw in the six-month CR fiasco, there’s already a contingent of two-fingers-in-the-air congressmen (and women) who are virtually guaranteed to cause trouble. If Johnson once again exposes himself as the Democrats’ speaker, they might make enough friends to cause him real trouble.

Of course, any sort of fight would then have to wait until January, when Trump would be set for inauguration. Think he’d take kindly to any distractions?

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