Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday, the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status.
Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations, and no budget. “We can’t manage our money,” says Rauner. “We’re like a banana republic.”
So much for that "do or die" procedural vote we just noted.
Moments ago CNN reported that, as many speculated, Mitch McConnell will delay the vote on healthcare until after the July 4 recess, confirming last night's news that Republicans simply don't have the needed number of votes in the Senate. As a reminder, republicans don't have short support for the bill, with at least 5 GOP senators saying they won’t even back a procedural vote on the measure that was supposed to take place this week.
At some point, either today or tomorrow, Senate Republicans must hold a procedural vote on Obamacare if they have prayer of passing the legislation before the July 4th recess, a stated goal of Senate Majority Lead Mitch McConnell. The procedural vote will kick off 20 hours of required debate and flurry of amendments so if it slips beyond tomorrow then the whole repeal process will almost certainly slip as well. According to The Hill, at least four Republican Senators are currently opposed to the motion to proceed:
Two weeks after Trump's ominous "China "tried and failed" to contain North Korea tweet, the US president appears to be getting closer to that default condition in US-China relations which many had anticipated from day one: a not particularly cooperative one. Here's Reuters:
Following the drop in UMich confidence preliminary print for June (as Republican hope fell), The Conference Board's measure of confidence ticked up, handily beating expectations. The present situation index rose sharply but economic expectations tumbled to its lowest since January.