WASHINGTON — I have good news about the federal government, and the good news is a date.

On September 2, the President signed a continuing resolution that funds the United States through December 11. That is the deal. The government is on a lease. The lease is real, the lease is short, and the lease is the most honest document Congress has produced in years, because it does not pretend.

"You can say a lot of things about a government that runs on a 90-day lease. I'm here to say the lease is real."

The mainstream coverage of December 11 has been “looming,” a word used by people who have never met a deadline they didn’t describe as looming. I prefer the truth: on December 12, the government is scheduled to stop existing, and the only institution standing between the American people and that outcome is a room full of people who have not yet finished counting the votes from the midterms.

I find this clarifying. For 53 days, every federal employee in the country knows exactly what they are worth: the amount of money Congress agreed to spend on them in a building, on a Tuesday, in September. Private employers cannot offer that clarity. I have a man at my dry cleaner who has been promised a loyalty card since 2019.

The nonpartisan analysts describe December 11 as the first of several “converging year-end deadlines,” which is the phrase professionals use when they have already started running.

THE DECEMBER 11 FILE: WHAT WE KNOW

  • The government is funded through December 11, 2026
  • December 11 is a Friday
  • The midterm winners are not sworn in until January
  • The people who wrote the lease are not the people who will renew it
  • The calendar is the last institution Americans agree on

Some governors, I am told, have begun stockpiling. The Pentagon has printed a second calendar, “for continuity.” I support both. A nation that has seen two shutdowns in a decade should keep a spare calendar the way my mother kept a spare radio: not because she liked the radio, but because she had met the power company.

The answer, clearly, is a national day of gratitude for the date. December 11, celebrated every year, with the lighting of a single congressional candle, which is blown out by the Speaker, which is relit by the minority leader, which is extinguished by a gust of wind that the CBO has scored as neutral.

You can say a lot of things about a government that runs on a 90-day lease. I am here to say the lease is real.

December 11 is a Friday. The government is scheduled to exist until then.