House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have announced a deal to avoid a potential government shutdown set to come at the end of this month, tossing the specter of a calamitous federal funding lapse three months down the road and letting folks around the country breathe a sigh of relief. Consider who benefits from a shutdown: payday loan companies that can extract high-interest-rate loans for struggling government workers, repossessors, banks that charge overdraft fees and others that thrive on financial insecurity. And consider who is harmed: veterans, millions of civil service workers, millions more who rely on their services, local communities and businesses that depend on the flow of their commerce and so on. In short, no one in charge should have any real reason to want to inch towards that calamity, yet the looming prospect of one seems to be constantly overhanging a Congress that is largely paralyzed, hard-pressed to do its most basic duties. Meanwhile, the ax hangs over the head of federal employees and those who depend on them throughout the country. The reason this keeps happening is because there are some Republicans in the House hell-bent on advancing harebrained policy objectives as attachments to spending bills despite the risk, with the apparent belief that a shutdown would not get blamed on them. In this latest instance, the poison pill pushed by Johnson was to make noncitizen voting illegal in federal elections, a notion that raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill on account of that already having long been illegal. Democrats understood this proposal, which would require proof of citizenship to vote, for what it was: a further attempt to increase friction in the voting process and expand opportunities for friendly officials to challenge, reject, discard or delay legitimate votes under cover of legal compliance. It would also serve as a rhetorical opportunity for Donald Trump and his campaign to kill two birds with one stone — calling into question the legitimacy of the 2024 election before it’s even taken place and representing immigrants as dangerous to the very fabric of the country. Fortunately, despite the fact that Trump has got Johnson in his back pocket, the latter is a weak speaker and can’t quite execute his marching orders as he’d like, as even others in the GOP conference wouldn’t go along. After some weeks of flailing, Johnson has faced facts and agreed to a deal with Schumer and the Democrats that not only strips out the voting provision but keeps funding levels stable through Dec. 20; this hardly deserves a ticker tape parade but it’s at least good news, not giving Trump either of the things he wanted, which already has him snarling on his Truth Social platform. Trump’s diehard acolytes in the House have begun pledging to vote against it, but luckily there are plenty enough sane Republicans remaining to join with the Democrats to counteract these members’ destructive impulses. The agreement will keep Uncle Sam in business while Congress returns to their districts for the elections and to see if the next Congress is more productive than this one has been.