Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Mike Warren, senior editor at The Dispatch.

And today we're talking with Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist and advisor who was my go-to

source for all questions on process and politics when it comes to Capitol Hill. We'll talk about

the state of things right now as Congress barrels toward a government shutdown. Can the Senate

save the government? Will the House Republican Conference get their act together? We're going to

talk about all of that in just a moment?

Liam Donovan? Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast.

Okay Liam, let's take stock of where we are. We were recording this on Tuesday morning,

September 26th. It is what essentially five days until the government shuts down as we recorded.

And things are looking pretty bleak in terms of avoiding the shutdown, but the Senate is doing

their dandist to try to come up with some kind of short-term strategy for getting the government

funded. It would be 45 days worth of Ukraine aid at a certain level, disaster money.

I guess that's what the Biden White House is pushing. The Senate may be not able to get that.

What is going on? How should we judge whether the Senate, after the House was unable to get

something passed last week, how the Senate is doing and how likely that is to actually pass?

Sure, I think that's been the undercover story to some degree. While everybody's had

eyes on the House and their dysfunction, this work period was supposed to go very differently

for the Senate. They were supposed to spend that first two weeks working through a series of

non-controversial bipartisan appropriations bills that would make the pressure overwhelming

on the House to accept whatever the Senate dictated. It was expected at that point to be something

longer on the CR side, something that included a full supplemental that likely included a

significant disaster relief and maybe a full compliment for Ukraine. That did not turn out to be the

...