F-Caucus? These guys aren’t even that good.

No pay for troops? Fine. But the Hunter Biden probe? Essential!

Three days before the federal government’s funding was to expire, Rep. Jason Smith called a news conference in the House TV studio. Had the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee come up with a last-minute plan to avert a government shutdown?

Um, no. Instead, Smith (R-Mo.) was announcing “new and alarming” accusations Wednesday against Hunter Biden, and dumping another 700 pages of documents about the presidential son’s finances. A reporter asked about the wisdom of focusing on such “other priorities” as the federal government careened toward disaster.

“House Republicans can walk and chew gum,” Smith replied. “We’re pretty good at that.”

How true! They can shut down the government and impeach President Biden on bogus charges — all at the same time.

In recent days, Donald Trump has issued two commands to the House Republican majority. First, the former president told them they must “either IMPEACH the BUM or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!” Next, he told them to shut down the federal government in order “to defund these political prosecutions against me.” He further ordered them: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!”

This explains why, as the last days slipped away before the federal government’s funding expires on Saturday night, House Republicans weren’t even trying to avert the shutdown. Instead, on the House floor, they wasted days debating spending bills that would do nothing to ward off the looming crisis even if they passed — and one of the four failed. And then, just two days before the shutdown deadline, they staged the first hearing of their “impeachment inquiry” into Biden — an embarrassing session in which even their own witnesses said they didn’t have the goods on the president.

In the Senate, by contrast, Republicans and Democrats negotiated a short-term deal to avoid a shutdown. As it advanced through the Senate by overwhelming votes of 77-19 and 76-22 en route to passage, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) pleaded with colleagues to avoid the “actively harmful proposition” of a shutdown that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and “take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward.”

But Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he wouldn’t even allow the House to consider the bipartisan Senate compromise.

And so, barring some deus ex machina, millions of U.S. troops and other government employees will be forced to work without pay beginning on Sunday. Other federal workers will be furloughed; millions of women, infants and children will be denied food assistance; and many more Americans will find that the government services they count on — national parks, airport security, medical research, health and safety inspections, small business loans, infrastructure projects — have been curtailed.

But House Republicans did take action to protect and insulate one crucial government function from the ravages of a shutdown. They have designated their impeachment inquiry into the president an “essential” operation, CNN’s Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona report, so vital to the national interest that it must continue undisturbed during a shutdown.

How’s that for a set of priorities? The troops won’t be paid and infants won’t be fed — but the pursuit of Hunter Biden must go on.

Perhaps it is “essential” to keep the impeachment investigation going because, after nine months of subpoenas, interviews, hearings and the mining of 12,000 pages of bank records, House GOP sleuths still haven’t produced any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. In a stark acknowledgment of that failure, they now claim that they don’t actually need direct proof of misconduct to impeach him. Instead, they have trumpeted all the financial and sexual misdeeds the president’s son undertook while in the throes of a crack cocaine addiction, and they are trying to sell the public a smear by association: Biden fils did bad stuff, so Biden père must be impeached.

The House Oversight Committee’s hearing on Thursday, titled “The Basis for an Impeachment Inquiry of Joseph R. Biden Jr.,” would have been the time, in a proper impeachment proceeding, for the investigators to bring in witnesses with first-hand knowledge of offenses committed by the accused.

But in this fact-free impeachment, there are no such witnesses. So, instead of bringing in facts, House Republicans brought in hacks: Three partisans who had no direct knowledge of the situation but who had already auditioned their anti-Biden arguments on Fox News.

There was tax lawyer Eileen O’Connor, a former member of Trump’s presidential transition team who has held leadership roles in conservative and Republican groups. O’Connor has shared cartoons on social media expressing support for anti-vaxxers, alleging “deep state” collusion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, decrying an immigrant “invasion” and celebrating the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in the killing of two people during protests and riots over police misconduct.

Also at the witness table was accountant Bruce Dubinsky, who shared on social media a doctored photo of Joe Biden with the pouch of a jock strap covering his eyes, nose and mouth. He also “liked” two Trump campaign ads, complaints about Trump’s first impeachment, Trump’s claims that there would be fewer covid-19 cases if there was less testing, and criticism of the Jan. 6 committee.

And there was Jonathan Turley — of course. The go-to Republican witness regularly contradicts his earlier positions to suit whichever argument his hosts are making. Ostensibly a constitutional lawyer, he is best known as a Fox News regular who falsely claimed that Dominion Voting Systems machines switched Trump votes to Biden in 2020. Among the headlines on his recent columns for Fox News, the New York Post and others are references to the “Biden corruption mindset” and a proposal for Biden to “pardon Hunter and withdraw from the 2024 election.” Another headline: “Joe and Jill Biden finally acknowledge 7th grandchild for most obnoxious reason.”

Yet even this partisan panel couldn’t deliver. Not one of them testified that House Republicans had met the threshold for impeaching a president. “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment,” Turley informed them.

Under questioning, Turley said the lawmakers needed to find a “linkage to the president” — a quaint idea. “Whether he participated, whether he encouraged it, we simply don’t know, and we don’t even know if this was an illusion or not,” he said, telling lawmakers that they had not established “that type of nexus.”

Dubinsky, similarly, testified that “more information is still needed” to determine “whether or not the Biden family and its associates’ businesses are involved in any improper or illicit activities, and whether those activities, if any, were connected to President Joe Biden.”

“If the Republicans had a smoking gun or even a dripping water pistol, they would be presenting it today,” Jamie Raskin (Md.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, taunted. “But they’ve got nothing on Joe Biden.”

Instead, they offered innuendo and sleights of hand.

O’Connor testified that she wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. She said, “It was called, ‘You’d Go to Prison for What Biden Did.” Under questioning from Democrats, she later acknowledged that the headline was “You’d Go to Prison for what Hunter Biden Did.”

“I was cutting down words to stay within my five minutes,” she explained.

Uh-huh.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) displayed what appeared to be a screenshot of a text message, which he claimed showed that Hunter and Jim Biden, the president’s brother, were trying to give Joe Biden “plausible deniability” of their “business dealings.” Donalds omitted the actual context of the exchange: Hunter Biden’s alimony payments.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused Donalds of displaying a “fabricated image.”

Smith, the Ways and Means chairman, cited a document related to a Hunter Biden search warrant, which Smith said was evidence of how “the Biden Justice Department protected the Biden brand.” He neglected to note that the date of the document was Aug. 7, 2020 — when it was the Trump Justice Department.

Earlier, Smith had claimed that a Hunter Biden text message to a business associate about the family’s “brand” showed “an effort to sway U.S. policy decisions. But that message was dated June 6, 2017 — when Joe Biden held no office and wasn’t even a candidate.

Smith, deeply troubled that Hunter Biden had “cashed in,” evidently saw nothing wrong in sending out a fundraising appeal last week soliciting donations based on his role “leading the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.) sent a similar one after Thursday’s hearing. Smith told GOP donors that “with your generous support, we will be able to expose Joe Biden and reveal the truth about this alleged corruption.”

But the “corruption” remains entirely “alleged” — and Thursday’s hearing didn’t change that.

Without hard evidence, Republicans took their witnesses on tours of soft hypotheticals:

“If the current president has been compromised.”

“If the president is involved.”

“If a nexus was established.”

“If he sent the money.”

“If Vice President Biden used his office to influence domestic or foreign policy for the financial benefit of his son.”

“If Joe Biden or his family is receiving some kind of benefit.”

Nearly five hours after the hearing began — and 57 hours before the government was to shut down — the Democrats’ witness, law professor Michael Gerhardt, revealed that he had been keeping a tally. “More than 35 times the Republican witnesses and Republican members of the committee have used the word ‘if,’” he said.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) replied that “if they would continue to say ‘if’ or ‘Hunter’ and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.”

Publicly, right-wing commentators panned the hearing. Privately, Republican leadership aides agreed. Their witnesses had undermined their case. Democrats tied up proceedings with unanimous consent requests and points of order. They displayed “Republican Shutdown” countdown clocks on tablets on the dais and used their questioning time to talk about government programs that would cease. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) resorted to a barnyard obscenity — twice. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) displayed a poster of a scantily-clad woman and shouted random interruptions: “Democrats are the party of shutdown! ... What about BLM rioters?”

“As a former director of emergency management,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) told the committee, “I know a disaster when I see one.”

Too bad House Republicans are cutting off funds for FEMA.

When right-wingers howled about the bipartisan debt ceiling deal that McCarthy struck with Biden in the spring, McCarthy promptly reneged on the deal — setting the country on its current course toward a shutdown.

When some of the same right-wingers threatened to oust McCarthy if he didn’t launch impeachment proceedings against Biden, McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry.

And when the right-wingers threatened to cause more havoc unless he cut off military aid to Ukraine, McCarthy ordered up an “emergency” meeting of the Rules Committee on Thursday night to zero out funds for Ukraine from the Pentagon spending bill.

“It’s like every room the speaker goes into is an escape room,” observed Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee. “He just does whatever he needs to do to get out, even if it means caving to MAGA Republicans every single time.”

But there might be no escape this time. That’s because the MAGA Republicans actually want a shutdown.

This week, as House GOP leaders ignored the approaching deadline, Democrats used a procedural “point of order” to force a brief floor debate on the government shutdown.

This infuriated Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), who shouted that Democrats were only forcing a discussion about the government shutdown because “they don’t want to talk about Hunter Biden.”

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a McCarthy ally, quarreled with the notion “that somehow Republicans are in favor of a government shutdown. No one desires a government shutdown.”

No?

Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, brought receipts. “I have the quotes right here,” he replied.

Among the Republicans on Boyle’s list:

“We don’t fear a government shutdown. ... Most of the American people won’t even miss it.” (Rep. Bob Good, Virginia)

“It’s time to call a halt to spending, and if the government shuts down, let’s shut it down.” (Rep. Ralph Norman, South Carolina)

“I’m not afraid of shutdowns.” (Donalds)

Roy mocked the “swamp dwellers hand-wringing over a possible shutdown,” while Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) declared it “Kevin McCarthy’s fault that the government is going to shut down.”

Boyle missed a few.

Rep. Greg Steube (Fla.) told Fox News that “people in my district are willing to shut the government down for more conservative fiscal policy.”

And Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.), who thinks a shutdown would be “fine,” reasons that “if the government is not open, we’re not wasting taxpayer dollars.”

McCarthy, trapped in a no-escape escape room, attempted to create a diversion. He issued a last-minute ransom note to Biden: Republicans will let the government remain open if he closes the southern border. Never mind that McCarthy probably couldn’t deliver on his end of the deal. Did the speaker forget that Trump shut down the government in 2018 for the same reason? It didn’t end well.

“Look, this isn’t that difficult to happen,” McCarthy told reporters. “All the president has to do: Call us up. Let’s go sit down and get this done before the end of the week. He’s changed this by a simple stroke of his own words of how this border is happening.”

Stroke of his own words?

The shutdown cometh — and the only man who can stop it is talking gibberish.

By late Thursday, even McCarthy’s Republican colleagues were baffled. “Mr. Speaker, leaders lead from the FRONT,” Rep. Scott Perry (Pa.), head of the House Freedom Caucus, posted on social media. “We need your plan.”

You might even say it’s “essential.”

Opinion by Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. His new book is “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party”