GOP Senators Threaten a Shutdown

By Yuval Rosenberg

A government shutdown? Looking likely. An
MLB lockout? A sad certainty. More Covid lockdowns? President Biden
says no. Here’s what you need to know on this Thursday evening.

GOP Senators Say They Won't Allow Quick Passage of
Bill to Avoid Government Shutdown

Taking a big step to avoid a looming government shutdown,
congressional leaders on Thursday announced that they had reached
an agreement on a stopgap bill that would fund a variety of federal
operations through mid-February. The House passed the continuing
resolution that emerged from the agreement in a 221-212 vote late
in the afternoon, with just one Republican crossing party lines to
support the measure.

But lawmakers aren’t out of the woods quite yet. A handful of
conservative Republicans are still threatening to delay the Senate
vote on the spending bill as part of an effort to defund President
Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses. Their continued
objections raise the risk of a government shutdown starting Friday
at midnight, when the current short-term funding deal runs out.

Optimism about the deal: The stopgap funding measure
would provide government funding at current levels through February
18, while providing an additional $7 billion for the resettlement
of refugees from Afghanistan.

Leaders from both parties expressed confidence that the bill
would pass through Congress and a shutdown would be avoided. “We’re
not going to shut the government down,” Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said. “That makes no sense for anyone.
Almost no one on either side thinks that’s a good idea.”

President Biden was also optimistic. “We have everything in
place to be able to make sure there is not a shutdown,” he said.
“There is a plan in place unless somebody decides to be totally
erratic, and I don't think that will happen,” he added.

A Republican rebellion: A small group of hardline
conservatives in the Senate — including Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted
Cruz (R-TX) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) — continued to push for an
amendment to the continuing resolution that would defund federal
oversight of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private
companies with more than 100 employees, which they say is
unconstitutional and economically harmful. If their demand for such
a vote is not met, one or more of the senators could delay the
funding bill, making it impossible to pass by the midnight Friday
deadline, resulting in a shutdown that could last several days.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Lee again condemned the vaccine
mandate. “I don’t want to shut down the government,” he said. “The
only thing I want to shut down is Congress funding enforcement of
an immoral, unconstitutional vaccine mandate.”

Marshall claimed that his constituents strongly support his
strategy. “My phone has blown up and continues to blow up and with
the vaccine mandate issue, but not one Kansan has reached out to me
to say, ‘Don't shut the government down,’” he said.

A possible solution: The hardliners say that a simple
majority vote on their amendment to defund vaccination mandate
enforcement would satisfy them. However, such a vote would be
unusual, since it would normally require 60 votes to pass rather
than 51, and that could be an issue for leaders in both
parties.

“I've offered a very simple solution, a very reasonable
solution. ... I just want to vote on one amendment," Lee said. “A
simple up-or-down, yes or no, a simple-majority vote. That's all
I'm asking. ... We're providing every opportunity to avoid a
shutdown,” he added.

The simple majority threshold for a vote could be an important
factor, as conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia
declined Thursday to say whether he would back the Republican
effort. Although Manchin voted in September against an amendment
that sought to undo the vaccine mandate for federal employees, the
mandate affecting private employees may be a different matter.

“I’ve been very supportive of a mandate for federal government,
for military ... I’ve been less enthused about it in the private
sector,” Manchin said Thursday.

Pelosi says they’ll get it done: Though Manchin left
others guessing about how he would approach the issue, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) left little room for interpretation as
far as her views are concerned. Slamming the hardline Republicans
for supporting those who oppose Covid-19 vaccines, Pelosi decried
their “double sense of irresponsibility” for rejecting both science
and the duty to govern.

“This is so silly that we have people who are anti-science,
anti-vaccination saying they're going to shut down government over
that,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “And you're
asking me what's our message? Our message is that we have to
respect governance, and we have to respect science, and that's what
we are doing and we will pass this legislation," she added.

Pelosi said that she doesn’t think Republicans really want to
shut down the government, and that she expects the continuing
resolution to become law. “We will get it done, and we will get it
done in a timely fashion,” she said.

Biden Announces Plan to Prevent a Winter
Covid Surge

President Biden on Thursday announced new steps to combat the
Covid-19 pandemic heading into the winter months, calling for
expanded campaigns to increase vaccinations and booster shots,
improved availability of free at-home testing and stronger testing
requirements for international travelers.

Biden emphasized that his plan “doesn’t include shutdowns or
lockdowns” and said he hoped Americans would rally around the new
efforts.

“My plan I’m announcing today pulls no punches in the fight
against Covid-19. It’s a plan that I think should unite us,” he
said. “I know Covid 19 has been very divisive in this country. It’s
become a political issue, which is a sad, sad commentary. It
shouldn’t be, but it has been. Now as we move into the winter and
face the challenge of this new variant, this is a moment when we
can put the divisiveness behind us, I hope. This is a moment we can
do what we haven’t been able to do enough of through this whole
pandemic: Get the nation to come together.”

Even as Biden spoke, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill were
threatening to shut down the government briefly over their
objections to the president’s vaccine mandate for large private
employers.

What’s in Biden’s plan: “While some of the measures are
new — notably a plan to launch ‘family mobile vaccination clinics,’
where all eligible members of a family could simultaneously get
shots and boosters — others build on existing tactics, such as
rallying businesses to mandate vaccination-or-testing requirements
for employees,” The Washington Post
reports.

As part of Biden’s plan, the government will ramp up efforts to
get Americans, especially seniors, to get booster shots. The push
will include new ads and events as well as a special notice sent to
63 million Medicare beneficiaries.

The plan also will enable Americans covered by private insurance
to get reimbursed for buying rapid, at-home Covid tests and will
make those tests more available to those without private insurance
through health centers and clinics.

“Insurance reimbursement for at-home COVID tests is hardly the
most efficient way to give people better access to affordable
testing,” Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family
Foundation, said on Twitter. “But, it is something the Biden
Administration can do quickly with existing authority, and quick
action is important right now.”

Biden also said that, starting early next week, inbound
international travelers will be required to get a Covid test within
one day of their trip, a tighter timeframe than had previously
required. And he extended the requirement to wear a mask on
airplanes, trains and public transportation through March 18, with
the minimum fine for noncompliance doubled to $500 and fines of up
to $3,000 for repeat offenders.

On guard against omicron: Biden’s announcement, made in a
speech at the National Institutes of Health, came just hours after
the second confirmed U.S. infection from the recently discovered
omicron variant of the virus was found in Minnesota. A third case
was confirmed in Colorado.

Biden said that one of his polling experts had suggested that
some 30% of people who have insisted that they won’t be vaccinated
may now be open to receiving the shots because of the new omicron
variant. “We hope that’s true,” he said.

While that projection may be optimistic, any increase in
vaccinations rates would be a welcome turn for public health
experts concerned by persistent vaccine hesitancy fueled in large
part by a proliferation of misinformation. The Washington Post

notes that 58% of Americans were considered “fully
vaccinated” as of November 1. A month later, that figure had only
risen to 59.4%.

You can read more about Biden’s new plan
here or
here.

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