With the news being dominated by stories of an ethically-troubled Senator and an ethically-troubled Representative resigning from their positions of power in Washington D.C. today, many Americans might have missed that a scheduled showing of federal government shutdown theater has been postponed for at least another two weeks.

Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post reports:

Congress passed a short-term spending deal Thursday, sending to President Trump a bill to avert a partial government shutdown and setting up a heated budget fight later this month.

Trump has indicated that he will sign the deal, preventing a government stoppage that had been set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The deal does not resolve numerous debates over domestic spending, immigration and funding for the military that brought the government to the brink of partial closure, leaving party leaders with a new Dec. 22 deadline to keep the government open.

The next showing of government shutdown theater will come just ahead of Christmas, where it will compete with local performances of The Nutcracker ballet for the attention of Americans, where even if the federal government does shut down at that time, it will hardly be noticed because of the holidays. And also because the nonessential part of the government that would shut down doesn’t do very much during this time of year.

But then, for many of the affected departments and agencies, the same thing can be said for most of the rest of the year too.