Two-and-a-half weeks after a two-and-a-half week government shutdown - the first government shutdown since the 1990s - everything is just about back to normal on Capitol Hill. Normalcy these days, of course, means that not a great deal is getting done legislatively. But at least federal workers around the country are receiving their paychecks on time as party leaders in both chambers work in conference to negotiate an actual budget for Fiscal Year 2014.
The Eleventh Hour Agreement that ended the October shutdown created a number of important dates on legislators' calendars: temporary debt limit cushion will expire on February 7; appropriations for fiscal 2014, funded at current sequester levels, is set to expire January 15; the conferees - 22 Senators and 8 House Members - who are tasked with agreeing to a budget resolution by December 15, are scheduled to convene next on November 13.
The impetus for the last shutdown, to the extent that it can be determined and easily summarized, was the fundamental disagreement between Democrats and Republicans as to whether Obamacare was such a destructive government intrusion on the American people that they would be better off with the government simply not functioning at all. After an Obamacare rollout that could charitably be described as "bumpy," the jury is still out with respect to the law and its current warts.
With Obamacare already wreaking havoc on unwitting patriots across America or helping to insure the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free (depending on whom you ask), the next showdown will not be waged over efforts to delay the law. Instead, the issues likely to keep lawmakers at work on nights and weekends this winter will be more traditional partisan budget battles: cutting spending versus increasing revenues, entitlement reform versus eliminating corporate tax loopholes, Fox versus MSNBC.
Come January, the stakes of failing to reach an agreement will be the same as they were in September, but for this round of possible brinksmanship, the Holy Grail of defunding or defending Obamacare is no longer on the table. Furthermore, Standard and Poor's estimated that the October shutdown cost roughly $24 billion in the midst of an argument over how best to stabilize and grow an already fragile economy. These facts, along with the pound of political flesh that each side was forced to pay to end the last shutdown, are reason for tempered optimism that this budget debate will at least be about the budget.
Then again, as Congress continues to boldly explore new frontiers of partisan rancor and gridlock, the only guarantee in this likely confrontation, no matter which side you fall on, is that any failure to reach an accord will be the other side's fault.
