Today is Friday, December 20, 2024, one day until the beginning of winter. Brrr! Well, the government won’t shut down as anticipated as recently as Thursday since the House approved legislation to avert a shutdown before the deadline today, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration after a whirlwind week on Capitol Hill. This development forms the core of an online article for The Hill by Aris Folley entitled “House passes bill to avert government shutdown after whirlwind funding fight.”

The chamber voted 366-34-1 in support of the legislation, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed for passage since GOP leadership brought the bill to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process. All Democrats except one – Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), who voted present – joined 170 Republicans in voting yes.

The horrible Speaker of the House, MAGA Mike (R-LA), lauded the legislation as “‘America First’ legislation because it allows us to be set up to deliver for the American people.”

But get this, folks, this stopgap bill, as negotiated by the richest man on the planet, Elon No “Truss,” was criticized by the only party that seems to care for the working class, the Democrats, for taking out cancer care for children – children! – and other things like reforms for the pharmacy benefit managers that lower prices of drugs for all Americans. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said these repugnicans “want to take out community health centers.” I think this is outrageous and there is nothing to do about it. A provision to drop childhood cancer research is part of this package and all Americans should be up in arms over it. You can thank the new shadow president for this: Elon Musk. He didn’t want it for some reason not known to anyone. I’d say what a bastard this South African is, wouldn’t you say?

Some line items that did get into this bill are the disaster aid portion that includes almost $29 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund and $2 billion in funding for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loans program, which businesses and homeowners rely on for low-interest loans to recover from disasters. Of that amount, $50 million is assigned to the Office of Inspector General for the SBA for audits and reviews of disaster loan and disaster loan programs. Officials said the program ran out of funds during hurricane season.

More than $20 billion would go toward the Department of Agriculture for disaster aid, while lawmakers also agreed on an additional $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, as well as about $8 million for oversight under the Office of the Inspector General.

Money will go to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will receive upward of $12 billion in funding, and the Departments of Agriculture Forest Service and the Interior that negotiators say is important to address consequences of disasters in 2024 and in recent years. Of course, all of this reflects on the pernicious effects of climate change that will get nothing committed during a second Dump presidency, as everyone should be aware.

Everyone should be acutely aware that Democrats again saved the day while these revolting repugnicans seemed to propel a government shutdown, no matter the economic consequences to all those affected.

Is this good news then? Sort of; let’s hope Johnson’s position as Speaker is in jeopardy now because of his bungling of this process. I will not care that he is removed as soon as possible. The government will be kept open at least through the upcoming holiday season.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to be missing in action here, since I will be meeting my Long Island friend, “Jake,” tomorrow for a full day. Whenever we get together, we spend at least 10 hours together, which could be construed as a long time, but we make up for not meeting regularly (we seem to meet every three months or so) by spending a full day together. Generally, Jake will leave me Sunday morning around 12:30 a.m. since I established a curfew the last time he visited me many months ago. Otherwise, he would depart closer to 1:30 or later if he could, but this unsettled Elliot the last time he did this, so I gently spoke to him about spending too much time with me in the apartment. He begrudgingly agreed to leave earlier when I first raised it.

So enjoy your Saturday, the first day of winter.

And so it went!