1) Washington is staring at the potential of a government shutdown Monday night. This is grim. Congress has approved four temporary spending bills since the end of the government’s fiscal year in September to prevent a shutdown.

2) The most recent stopgap measure was a seven day plan this week. Mbrs knew that the COVID/coronavirus bill was so large, it would take several days to send to the White House. Yes, that bill funds the government until next fall. But it isn’t law until the President signs it.
3) So, the most recent Band-Aid measure was the equivalent of fiscal grout. The House will approve another emergency measure on Monday. But there's doubt the Senate will do anything before then. And, it’s unclear if President Trump would sign anything. That means a shutdown.
4) A shutdown is always dangerous. It could be more dangerous during a pandemic. And it’s unclear if a shutdown could have devastating impacts on distributing the vaccine.
5) It takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate to override a presidential veto. With 359 House yeas and 92 Senate yeas on the COVID/omnibus bill, both bodies have way more than a supermajority to override a presidential veto.
6) But note that President Trump didn’t directly threaten to veto the coronavirus/omnibus bill. He didn’t have to. The President could prevent the package from becoming law, via a “pocket veto.”
7) Pocket vetoes are very rare. And you won’t find the term in the Constitution. Congress must find itself in the proper parliamentary posture for this possibility to be in play. But we could very well be in those circumstances now.
8) Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says the President has ten days (Sundays excluded) to either sign or veto a bill. Otherwise, the bill magically becomes law, sans signature. The COVID/omnibus bill is still not at the White House.
9) Here’s where the pocket veto comes into play:

The latest the current Congressional session can end is 11:59:59 am on January 3.
10) That is the drop-dead time for the 116th Congress. A President may in effect “veto” a bill by keeping it in his “pocket” and not signing it if Congress passes it too close to a Congressional adjournment.
11) Under the Constitution, the new Congress must begin at noon et on January 3.

In other words, Congress needed to get the President the bill by December 23 to avoid a pocket veto. That’s the “ten-day/Sundays excluded” window.
12) That would force the President to either sign or veto the bill. And, if he vetoed it, Congress could try to override.

But Congress adjourning within that “ten day/Sundays excluded” window effectively neuters the possibility of an override attempt.
13) The President gets the bill and holds onto it. He can run out the clock on the Congressional session, blocking any potential override attempt. The bill just goes poof. It does not carry over into the 117th Congress.
14) If President Trump neither signs nor vetoes the coronavirus/spending bill at this stage, it’s like it never happened.

It’s unclear if the President’s proposed changes to the bill could pass. And, don’t forget that Congress has some responsibility in all of this, too.
15) Congress thought it had a deal with President Trump in 2018 to avoid a shutdown. It didn’t. Perhaps wiser heads should have anticipated the pocket veto scenario. Congress dithered well into December, trying to secure a final COVID package.
16) An earlier resolution would have given Congress recourse via a veto override. Now, there’s none.
17) This may be one of the worst Christmas scenarios to ever unfold on Capitol Hill. And there have been some doozies. A Senate vote on Obamacare on Christmas Eve morning in 2009.
18) The House impeached President Clinton just days before Christmas in 1998. The House reprised that performance days before Christmas in 2019. We’ve had Congress return to session between Christmas and New Year’s.
19) December is always a torrent of action in Congress. It’s nothing but late-night negotiations, weekend sessions and chaos. But this year's fury may have ultimately produced nothing at a time of crisis.

More from Chad Pergram

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This is a good piece on fissures within the GOP but I think it mischaracterizes the Trump presidency as “populist” & repeats a story about how conservatives & the GOP expelled the far-right in the mid-1960s that is actually far more complicated. /1

I don’t think the sharp opposition between “hard-edge populism” & “conservative orthodoxy” holds. Many of the Trump administration’s achievements were boilerplate conservatism. Its own website trumpets things like “massive deregulation,” tax cuts, etc. /2

https://t.co/N97v85Bb79


The claim that Buckley and “key GOP politicians banded together to marginalize anti-Communist extremism and conspiracy-mongering” of the JBS has been widely repeated lately but the history is more complicated. /3


This tweet by @ThePlumLineGS citing a paper by @sam_rosenfeld and @daschloz on the "porous" boundary between conservatives, the GOP and the far-right is relevant in this context.


This is a separate point but I find it interesting that Gaetz, like Roy Moore did In his failed Senate campaign, disses McConnell. What are their actual policy differences? MM supported taking health care away from millions, a tax cut for the rich, conservative judges, etc. /5
Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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