Disclaimer: The thoughts and feelings expressed in this post are solely the author's and do not represent the official position of any government agency.
Well, it's a little early yet to start this, I suppose.
It's only 11:20 p.m. Eastern time. The Senate has forty minutes to decide whether we're shut or open for business.
C-SPAN shows 50 "yes" and 48 "no." Five Democrats have voted "yes," among them the new Senator from Alabama, Doug Jones. (The other Democrats are Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Claire McCaskill.)
But four Republicans have voted "no." They are Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee and Rand Paul. John McCain is not present (out of town recovering from cancer treatments, presumably). And the Speaker of the House, Mitch McConnell, has also not voted. He is likely not going to vote this round because if they are unsuccessful, he can bring it back to a vote on a procedural rule of some sort. So he's probably not going to vote in order to preserve that option for himself.
They need 60 votes in favor of the continuing resolution (the "CR") to limit debate. This is known as "cloture." It's the filibuster killer. If they don't get the 60 (3/5 of the Senate), they can't close debate on the CR. And, thus, no actual vote on the bill.
Or, more precisely, in the words of the U.S. Senate Glossary (yes, that's an actual thing): Cloture is "[t]he only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes."
They're not getting cloture before Midnight Eastern. Or, at least, I don't think that they will.
So tomorrow's Saturday. I wouldn't go to work anyway and I rarely work on the weekends anyway. (I established something called "boundaries" when I left the law firm and have attempted to maintain clear lines of demarcation between "work time" and "home time." Weekends, unless absolutely necessary, are always home time.)
But the difference this weekend is that it's not merely that I wouldn't choose to work, but, if it were one of those absolutely necessary weekend (which it is, thankfully, not), I would not be permitted to work. I have not been deemed essential -- that is, excepted from the furlough -- which means that as of midnight Eastern, if there is no funding via the CR or otherwise, I am not allowed to work, even if I wanted to.
So there.
Time now, 11:36 p.m. Eastern. Twenty-four minutes to go.
C-SPAN shows no movement.
So here we are. It's been roughly four years and three months since the last shutdown. Do you remember why we shut down last time? It was the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. This time, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA. I make no observations of comments about the legitimacy of the government shutdown in either case.
But I can tell you this: It's not a vacation for me and those like me. It's day upon day of uncertainty, wondering whether we will be paid when we are brought back to work. Because Congress doesn't have to pay us. They have to vote to give us our back pay. In 2013, they did. But they don't have to, and so this year, just like in 2013, we'll wait and get a little more anxious every day.
11:54 p.m. Eastern. The Washington Post says that Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell will be speaking from the Senate floor.
I see nothing yet.
Well, I think I'll sign off and walk the dog before I go to bed.
See you on the flip side for Day 1, unless, of course, they get something done in the next five minutes (11:55 p.m. Eastern).
