In the House, it’s true that the Rs don’t need a single D vote. And indeed, their plan seems to be to proceed without any:
In the Senate, however, Chisquirrel’s (and your) claim falls apart, as there aren’t enough Rs to simply ignore the Ds:
I actually haven’t heard all that much discussion on the looming funding deadline at all, from anyone.
Well, that Politico article is talking about a continuing resolution, not a budget bill, to kick the can down the road another month, and not every Republican is on board with that. Can Ryan get enough Republicans to support a continuing resolution? I imagine that he can, considering the deadline they’re facing. But it’s by no means a done deal.
And, as a budget bill, it has to start in the House. If it can’t get past the House, then the Senate 60-vote threshold doesn’t really enter into it. (Of course, there’s nothing stopping the Senate from round-filing whatever the House sends and creating their own, but the House has to send something over.)
But as to optics and perceptions, the Tea Party has all but stitched the words “Shut It Down” to the bottom of their Gasden flags, and has been rallying around that battle cry for years now. Sure, the Fox propaganda machine will work to shift that perception, but it looks like a heavy lift.
Repairing infrastructure is a good idea, but I don’t see anyone making money from it except contractors and the illegals they hire. Watching the Broadway bridge being replaced last year, most of the guys I saw were Mexican. Perhaps some of them were citizens and not sending money to Mexico to support their families.
Okay, that’s something interesting to debate, but I’m not going to get into it here, because it’s pretty far afield IMO from this thread’s topic. I was just offering that link to counter the implication that Democrats weren’t offering a plan of their own.
Okay. 
They could have better things in a plan, though. Making all medical costs deductible. Finding employment for large amounts of people laid off from an occupation. Coal miners, for example.
But I digress again, and I apologize.
Fuckin’ liberals, choking off the miners while flinging themselves headlong into solar power! And not a moments thought about what to do when we’ve drained the sun!
That’s not a problem. We only tap the sun’s energy at night.
Brilliant!
We have SPOILER alerts: Shouldn’t this joke have merited a “Put your coffee down?” I’m now cleaning sputtered coffee off my screen. In between fits of guffawing I manage to type the following:
The GOP has 240 Representatives in the House including every single Committee Chairman, and are ruling that institution with an Iron Thumb. The Oval Office is occupied by “the most Presidential and Republican President since Abe Lincoln,” and the Supreme Court has a majority of its members appointed by Republican Presidents — it’s probably the most repressive and right-wing court since the one that overruled Congress in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857.
And the U.S. Senate? There are 52 card-carrying members of the Republican Party now serving as U.S. Senators, compared with only 46 Democrats. The days of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are long in the past. The “Nuclear Options” have been exercised until none are left untried except thermonuclear annihilation itself, so it only takes 50 votes for the Senate to pass a budget. Not fifty-three, not fiftyish, that’s Fifty-zero with a Z.
Yet despite that the GOP controls four out of four of the powerful bodies in Washington, the Democrats are scheduled to get the blame for any shutdown! How dare they vote against sending EPA workers to tear up more regulations? How dare they let Homeland officials take the day off when they could be discriminating against Muslims eight hours a day? How dare the Democrats shut down government?
I just sputtered coffee all over my screen again. :o
In all your guffawing and coffee-sputtering you seem to have made a factual error here (two actually).
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There’s definitely still a legislative filibuster in place. It has not yet been removed via the nuclear option, so there’s still a step short of “thermonuclear annihilation itself” that can be tried. This is (one of) the reason(s) that Congress hasn’t passed any significant legislation.
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To pass a spending bill they’re going to need 60 votes for cloture, not just 50. See post #61 if you’re still confused about this.
They need 60 to force a stop to debate. They don’t need 60 to pass. Should the Democrats decide to filibuster the spending bill (cite requested), then sure, you need 60. A supermajority is only required when you are trying to shove something through that the other side finds abhorrent, unless you’re McConnell or Reid and don’t give a shit about the rules.
They already upped the ante with the Gorsuch. Are you trying to say there’s a line McConnell won’t cross? The turtle will cross every line he can reach, sometimes he’s just a little slow.
Wrong. 60 votes to pass any legislation the minority party even mildly objects to is pretty much the way the Senate has operated for years now.
You can’t pass it if you can’t force a stop to debate, ergo 60 votes are needed to pass.
As for a cite, here:
I’m saying he has not yet chosen to cross the line of nuking the legislative filibuster. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t have the votes to do so. Perhaps it’s because he’s just a nice guy. Doesn’t really matter why, the fact remains that that “nuclear option” is still sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be used. That line hasn’t yet been crossed.
If the Dems don’t start running ads after the shutdown with Trump photoshopped into The Grinch Who Stole Christmas from the kids of the federal employees, all of their consultants deserve to be fired.
ETA: Also… War on Christmas, anyone?
That cite says nothing about Dems threatening to filibuster.
And McConnell hasn’t had a chance to cross that line. The only major legislation to get past the House, the absolute joke of a healthcare bill, couldn’t even get a majority to get into reconciliation. The tax bill is looking to be a tossup for the same thing. The only time a filibuster was even threatened in the Senate, he blew the entire thing up.
Democrats don’t need to kill anything, Republicans are doing it all on their own, which has been my point from the start. With majorities in both Houses and the White House, they can’t get shit done because they’re too busy eating their own young, between the Tea Party obstructionists and the few Republicans in the Senate with morals. The Democrats bailed out the Republicans on the debt ceiling increase. Why does it fall to them to keep the government running, as well? Can’t the majority that keeps crying how they’re going to do SO MUCH to help the American people come up with something that actually helps the American people?
One party has repeatedly tried to govern. The other party has only knows how to throw tantrums and feces.
Wrong again.
Well, what about Trump’s statements that he WANTS a shutdown?
They can be read either as a continuance of the “Deconstruction of the Administrative State” policy…or a blustering temper tantrum from a child being told he’s going to be grounded.
“Fine! I wanted to play in my room ANYWAY.”
And now this:
Trump tells confidants that a government shutdown might be good for him:
“President Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically and is focusing on his hard-line immigration stance as a way to win back supporters unhappy with his outreach to Democrats this fall, according to people who have spoken with him recently.”