“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of HR 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations.”
Come on. The message is overtly political (blaming democrats for the shutdown when republicans control the presidency + the house + the senate) and 100% of the people pretending it’s not would be outraged if the same thing was posted under a different administration.
They don’t “control” the Senate. You need 60 seats in the Senate if the other party is willing to filibuster everything, and boy howdy are both parties willing to these days. If the GOP did have 60 seats, then they’d be able to pass that clean bill over the filibuster of the Democrats.
I didn’t say they have a filibuster proof majority in the senate, ‘control’ is just a bare majority because at that point you can bring up whatever legislation you want for votes.
The Republicans can end the shutdown today. They don't want to, they're letting it continue and that's their choice. They need 0 Democratic or independent votes to pass the funding bill if they change the rules, which requires a simple majority vote and they have that.
The longer the government is shut down, the better excuse/cover the executive branch has to permanentely layoff and shutdown departments. Democrats are going to lose this standoff either way...
I disagree. I think the fact that Democrats let Trump have a blank check-book for his first term was a massive mistake.
We went from having government shutdowns all the time due to the rampant spending to just covering up the fact that he's blowing through more money than presidents do in 8 years. It leads to a perception that he's actually fiscally responsible.
At this point, either political party pretending to care at all about fiscal responsibility is absolutely hilarious.
The standoff is about a component of the Affordable Care Act that is expiring. Democrats don't have the footing to win this battle - so the longer the standoff holds the worse outcome they can expect. Trump's administration seems to have wanted this shutdown... and Democrats walked right into the landmine.
Can you elaborate on which part you believe isn't true?
The bill already passed the House. The Democrats have a minorotiy in the Senate. 60 votes are required to pass the bill - and Democrats are holding it up, deliberately for political reasons.
Republicans can end the filibuster in the Senate with a simple majority after which they can pass the funding bill with a simple majority. But of course, they won't do that since it opens up other bills to be passed with a simple majority too in the future. So it's not factual.
It’s weird to me that any Democrat would be rooting for the nuclear option right now. After losing so badly last year, after demographic trends continue to degrade their ability to win majorities in either house or in to win in most swing states, and with Trump improving his numbers even in blue states last year. Democrats are currently daring Republicans to eliminate their last resort option to block anything, even though they should not be confident that the DNC will ever be in a position to benefit from this new power later themselves.
I think shutdowns are usually pretty stupid, but I’m not reading for “nuclear option” to be the way this one gets resolved.
While I'd prefer to get the first legislative crack at it, I am extremely convinced that the filibuster is poison to our country.
Congress cannot pass anything meaningful except one omnibus spending bill each year via budget reconciliation, which has arcane rules around flat budget impact after 10 years. Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders. While not all of this is bad, it has a few horrible effects.
First, the supreme court is more willing to interfere with executive action, amplifying its power as it finds reason to protect actions by the favored party and cancel actions by the disfavored party. Increasing the power of the supreme court shifts federal power towards an unelected branch that is the slowest to adjust to changing voter preference.
Second, as more power within the executive gets concentrated specifically with the president we enable more and more federal action at the whims of exactly one person. This exposes us to the current situation, where Trump is unfettered in how he wields the executive branch rather than guiding it and having its power distributed across the executive branch.
And we've also got the general popular dissatisfaction with congress and the democratic process because they can't get shit done. A country that has an enormously unfavorable opinion of congress is more primed for collapse into anti-democratic governance.
Yes, if we didn't have the filibuster then the GOP could pass all sorts of nightmare legislation. But I'd prefer legislation enabled through the will of the people to this slow collapse into authoritarianism.
> Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders.
It's really interesting how wildly different this is than parliamentary systems where Parliament is the ultimate authority and the executive's tenure simply ends if they lose the 'confidence' of a plurality in Parliament.
Instead we have a useless legislature as you described, and an executive whose claim to all this additional power is actually quite dubious, yet that executive controls nearly everything. I don't think a swing to the other party changes this, either (not that the DNC is capable of winning elections enough to ever hold the kind of power the GOP now has). I think from now on, the President will rule by executive action, and use creative avenues like rulings from friendly courts to vaguely legitimize this power.
An equally true statement is that republicans didn’t pass a spending bill that could attract 60 votes in the Senate. But in either case, Republicans are the majority in both houses, they write the bills and have the responsibility to write bills that can be passed and signed.
And it’s a small thing, but this is very obviously a hatch act violation and silly me, I feel like the President should be beholden to our laws.
Which part of the statement is false or campaigning? Is it not true Democrats have blocked the passage of the bill? Of course it is.. and people should know that, shouldn't they?
‘People should be lied to by the government out of political convenience’ is a theory I guess. Though not one I’d endorse.
It’s equally true that “Senate republicans failed to put forth a spending CR that could attract 60 votes” or “Senate republicans failed to pass filibuster reform to only require 50 votes on spending measures.” Are equally true statements yet somehow they didn’t make the autoresponders. Weird.
Absolutely! All those things could correctly be said, and maybe that’s what would be said now if the Democrats had won the last presidential election! Instead, they ran a candidate who was so unpopular she dropped out before Iowa last time she ran. The DNC still hasn’t processed this reality, though.
The point that everyone is so keen to miss is that those are fine statements to make by political parties or candidates and wholly inappropriate and obviously illegal ones to make by government employees and websites.. That there are two valid opposing ‘truths’ which can be wielded to bludgeon a political opponent is exactly why we made it illegal for the government to make these type of statements.
Turning all of our apolitical institutions into megaphones for the party in power is an absolute nightmare and is illegal for a reason.
Seriously - how can you possibly defend something like this: https://www.hud.gov/
They’re facts. What’s wrong with them? Democrats did shut down the government. One party currently wants a clean CR and the other, the minority, wants to advance their agenda as a condition of not forcing a shutdown. This is an exact reversal of what the republicans did years ago and we all mocked them for it.
"The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government" is a 'Fact' you think is appropriate to be displayed via a popup to every visitor on HUD.gov?
"The radical left has chosen to shut down the United States government in the name of reckless spending and obstructionism." is an appropriate message for Treasury.gov when it's illegal to use Federal resources for political messaging?
TBH I agree that one is too much. The ones that say "Democrats blocked H.R. whatever which was a clean CR" are fine though. Perhaps someone with at least half a clue okayed that kind of phrasing, and then people got carried away writing the more ridiculous ones knowing it would curry favor with Trump.
Always finding a way to blame the Republicans... last time they were in the minority and were blamed for shutting down the government. Now they're in the majority and you still want to blame them for shutting down the government.
To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics. Elections have consequences - and the longer Democrats drag this out the more excuse the executive branch will have to permanentely lay off people and shutdown departments.
Whoever’s to blame (the party that controls all three branches), it’s still wildly inappropriate and illegal to put political messaging on Federal websites (www.hud.gov for one glaring example) and in email signatures.
> To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics.
Seems a bit like projection when your summary is based on your weird assumption for who I would’ve blamed previously.
> Elections have consequences - and the longer Democrats drag this out the more excuse the executive branch will have to permanentely lay off people and shutdown departments.
That’s not how any of this works.. the Executive branch doesn’t have the constitutional ability to shut down departments or lay people off when they’re congressional mandated. This level of political science ignorance is a big part of how we got here.
Elections do have consequences and if Republicans feel that they have a mandate to kill USAID or any other department, they can pass a spending bill that zeroes it out. The President doesn’t get to decide to not spend those funds after Congress has authorized them.
It’s inconceivable to me that people don’t understand how much this line of thought and the associated actions have broken our government in ways that are going to be very difficult to undo.
> have broken our government in ways that are going to be very difficult to undo.
The cowardice of both parties to never balance the budget in the last 50 years (Except Clinton!) has done more damage, arguably, in miring us in permanent debt.
I suspect the people who are fine with the government shutting down and who are fine with questionably legal tactics to do away with departments like USAID, feel that even though these things are probably legally wrong, they’re better than just continuing to piss away more and more of future generations’ money, money that we don’t have.
I think the greatest sin involved in all of this is the government’s ridiculous magical, thinking that they can set tax policy and spending policy independently of each other. In my opinion, one of the two should be a fixed function of the other. Either we agree on our tax rates and government benefits, automatically adjust to fit in the budget, or we agree on what we’re going to spend, and taxes automatically adjust to match — either way it should be something everyone can calculate before the bill is voted on.
They control the government in all ways that it's possible to control the government. They *are* the government, so everything the government does is their fault, tautologically. We're not stupid (I hope).
It is not true that Democrats blocked H.R.5371. The bill was voted on unlike say when Republicans block a bill by sending the representatives home instead of voting on say an Epstein related issue. (Recent vote was 55-45 [1] which not every R voted yay).
The lapse in appropriations cannot singular be pointed at H.R.5371.
If Republicans had stuck to their campaign promises of a balanced budget then we wouldn't be in this situation as we wouldn't need additional borrowing.
Less politically, if 60+ people had input into the bill then it would've passed. Can't be upset that somebody didn't vote for something they didn't have input in.
Only 50 votes are needed in the Senate to pass any legislation (per constitution). The whole 60-votes is a requirement that any point can be changed by the Senate and has been recently for federal judges.
It wouldn't be false to have an email signature that says "President Trump was convicted of 34 felonies." Would it be reasonable to automatically update everybody's email response to say this?
Come on. The message is overtly political (blaming democrats for the shutdown when republicans control the presidency + the house + the senate) and 100% of the people pretending it’s not would be outraged if the same thing was posted under a different administration.