After a record-breaking shutdown that left Washington’s vending machines unstocked and lawmakers fighting over office coffee filters, Congress has finally agreed to fund the government, briefly. The new compromise bill keeps the lights on until late January, or, as one senator put it, “long enough to ruin everyone’s Valentine’s plans instead of Christmas.”
Democrats emerged from the standoff mildly triumphant, having secured food aid and a temporary dip in Donald Trump’s poll numbers. Republicans, meanwhile, declared victory for reasons that remain under investigation.
Still, optimism is low. With only weeks before the next funding cliff, congressional staffers have begun preemptively labeling their personal effects for storage. “We’ll just reuse the same arguments,” one exhausted aide sighed, “maybe change the fonts.”
Analysts predict the next shutdown could arrive as early as February, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like scheduling chaos in advance.
