Lisa Desjardins:
I am.
I’m checking to see if we have the text of this bill yet, and we do not. The deadline is Friday, as our viewers know. And let me just first make a plea to our viewers. I knew you want to change the channel probably right now. People do not like dealing with this again and again, but it really is worth understanding what’s happening in this moment.
I’m going to say some of it is the same, but there’s two reasons that this is different. One is what we expect to be in this particular short-term funding bill. It’s not just that. So let’s talk about a couple of things that are in the bill.
First of all, it would extend government funding to mid-March, so that means we are going to be back here again in March. Now there’s really $100 hundred for disasters, and that includes hurricane damage that we saw obliterated many parts of the south and southeast. This is something new. There will be $10 billion in direct aid to farmers.
Part of that has to deal with drought. And also this would allow year-round ethanol sales. We know that that is a powerful force, and some in the middle of the country particularly have wanted it. Now, the second reason this is important, critical test for Speaker Mike Johnson.
And so far he is happy and on very hard time getting this across the finish line. Many of his Republicans don’t like that it is this late. They haven’t seen the bill. They don’t like that there are not pay-fors for it. And there is a large group of Republicans that simply are not happy. Here’s one of them.
