Congress voted late Monday to reopen the government after a three-day shutdown, sending President Trump a short-term spending bill that passed after Senate Republican leaders pledged to act on immigration policy next month.
The House joined the Senate in passing the bill to fund the government through Feb. 8, reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program and roll back several health-care taxes. It passed 81-18 in the Senate and 266-150 in the House.
“I’m glad we can finally get back to work here,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the vote. He called the shutdown a “manufactured crisis” characterized by “damaging partisan theatrics.”
LOOK IN THE MIRROR WHEN YOU SAY THAT MITCH, 'CAUSE THE PARTISANSHIP STARTS WITH YOU.
In the meantime, my Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of Dem voters decrying the fact that their own party's leadership seemed to fold like origami paper.
We are going to have to recognize some sad truths:
- As much as the Far Left wants it, the main leadership of the Democratic Party genuinely believes in actual governance. They don't play the Republicans' extremist game of Chicken to see every car get smashed to hell going over cliffs. The Congressional Republicans had forced a shutdown, threatening the basic functions of government, and the Congressional Democrats knew that meant minor and major offices weren't going to be doing the Public any good. So yeah, Dems will tend to blink first in these Shutdown showdowns.
- The Dem leadership did get at least one thing good out of this: CHIP should get funded now for six years, which takes one hostage out of the equation.
- The remaining hostage in all this - DREAMers, relying on a DACA bill - may be facing hell over the next few weeks, but there's supposed to be a deal on the table where McConnell agreed to bring a DACA bill to a vote before this Continuing Resolution ends some time in March. This still puts the onus on Republicans, who are divided on the immigration issue to where ANY serious attempt to fix things will collapse on A) trump's wall obsession and B) the wingnut base's hatred of immigrants nullifying any proposal.
It hurts, in truth, to see the Democrats fold this quickly on a fight that they had every reason to play out longer than this. For all the rationales for keeping government working, they are doing this by sacrificing the current well-being of 800,000 or so Americans whose only crime was being brought here as kids by their illegal alien parents. They are seeing this - rightly - as a betrayal, with no guarantee that they are going to get to stay in the country they grew up loving and serving.
And this all still depends on McConnell, a man whose personal honor died years ago when he decided to condemn the nation to his partisan bullshit. As that Esquire article I linked to asked, Can you trust Mitch McConnell? His years of obstruction and manipulation make him one of the most evil men on the planet, and his track record of breaking deals and ignoring rules make me think of the only argument why you should NEVER deal with the devil.
Because a Deal with the Devil is no deal at all.
McConnell is bound to cheat, bound to stall, bound to lie, and do everything in his power to put the blame on Democrats again, who've shown a terrible willingness to shoulder such burdens at the expense of disillusioning their own voter base.
Despite all this, I have to argue that Democratic voters need to step up this midterms. Don't get bummed by this. Look at the bigger picture. Look at the son of a bitch sitting in the White House right now.
NOTHING is holding trump accountable to the law, certainly not the Congressional Republicans who are supposed to do their job maintaining Checks and Balances. On this one point alone, you NEED to show up and vote for EVERY DEMOCRAT on the ballot. With Democrats in charge of Congress after this midterms, you can be assured that they will hold trump and his cronies responsible for the laws they are breaking right now.
On that alone, Democrats, GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. Don't hide, don't despair. Keep fighting.
Otherwise, McConnell keeps winning, and the Republicans keep destroying everything we love.
2 comments:
Krugman seems to think that the deal wasn't that bad, and you have to remember that these are Republicans they are dealing with. If you think you can get a favorable deal with Mitch McConnell you are fooling yourself, and then there's the fact that whatever it is for DACA, the house won't pass it anyway, so the whole thing is a play to divide Democrats against themselves ahead of the midterms.
I, myself, don't want to let them succeed at that.
-Doug in Oakland
Doug's point needs to gain legs. Whether it's the purity pimps or those who want the fight taken to the R's and beltway media none of us can lose sight of the fact that a big motivation is to pit us against each other, and it's working in the short term. Let's get it out of our system and mobilize for the midterms. It's been obvious that the GOP has invested their time into conjuring strategies like this at the expense of giving any thought on how to govern for years. Taking the cheese on yet another ploy will only serve to blow an opportunity.
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