House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) surprised the Crazy Caucus by moving a 45-day spending bill to keep the government open that Democrats could support:
The legislation, which the Senate then passed with broad bipartisan support, marked a stunning reversal after many in Washington expected the government to close at midnight following several failed attempts by House Republicans to agree on spending legislation over the past week.
Ultimately, House Democrats supported McCarthy’s eleventh-hour proposal for a 45-day “continuing resolution” including disaster relief funds, an extension of a federal flood insurance program and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. All but one Democrat voted to support the legislation while 90 Republicans voted against it, resulting in a vote of 335-91.
Oddly, the "lone Democrat" happens to be my Representative, Mike Quigley (D-IL), because the bill temporarily halted aid to Ukraine.
Josh Marshall explains that all McCarthy did, really, was to shoot the hostage. Of course, McCarthy's the hostage, so...
At every point this was about the House Republican caucus’s demand to get some new goodies in exchange for not shutting down the government. The only slight ambiguity there is that for some House hardliners the shutdown itself clearly was the goodie. For the House hardliners it was goodies or a shutdown. There was no getting out of that binary choice because Kevin McCarthy refused any solution that relied on Democratic votes.
Then sometime today he decided to allow a vote on a clean resolution relying on Democratic votes. It passed and that was it. That change was really all that happened.
We’ve been on this course of escalating drama for weeks or months, with all the purported big matters of principle, all the tough talk about never backing down. And then they backed down and agreed to get nothing. So it all ended with a resounding “Never Mind.” But not before holding the hold federal government and much of the economy on tenterhooks for weeks or months.
So, good news, the government will keep going. The Supreme Court can start removing more of our rights based on bullshit theories proposed, one suspects, by billionaires, and the rest of us can keep getting on.