3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Sodokufan’s other posts
That is it. And extend the 2018 Farm Bill (all the various regular Ag programs) for another Fiscal Year but that was going to be in any version. The rest is just a “clean CR” w/o the debt limit extension, exactly the thing that just Wednesday you-know-who was saying was “stupid” and deserved primarying.
Would be interesting to see what’s the overlap of the 34 Rs who went “no” today and the 35 who went “no” yesterday, the difference being with or without the debt limit punt.
So who won?
Elon says he won because the long-time-negotiated bipartisan bill went from 1,500 or so pages to 118. A lot of small provisions that spend money, such as for pediatric cancer research and treatment, were dropped,
But since all 34 nay votes were Republican, you might say the Democrats won.
The Democrats are in a better position to play the blame game, since they acted as adults, and there was no shutdown on their watch. Of course, whether there is any benefit to that may be questioned.
EDITED: I do not see a gift link for my link above, so here is some of the article:
Seems the position was that other than the farm and disaster relief the bill should include adding nothing new, nothing more, to the existing programs and services. Just leave everything as-is. End of year omnibuses are customarily the way that multiple smaller scale new programs, new projects, directives to agencies, amendments to existing laws, extensions of authorization or increases to funding are packaged, that otherwise would take forever to be heard and passed individually. Note that originally there WAS a bipartisan compromise bill that included such things, but then the Billionaire Boyos and the FC hardliners got a bug up their fundaments that this was still giving Dems things they want and we can’t do that even if it costs us those WE want.
Same here. However, some government offices, parks, etc have been shut down, but not, for example- the Treasury- the money had to keep rolling in.
The critical parts will keep functioning. But- people like the parks and stuff.
<elon_musk>Challenge accepted! </elon_musk>
Stranger
I saw someone mention on Bluesky that the Republicans haven’t actually passed an appropriations bill since they won the House in 2022 - just a series of CRs that have kept us running on the last Pelosi budget.
I presume they’ll now wait until the week before this bill expires to shout “OH SHIT WE FORGOT TO MAKE A BUDGET” and repeat this rigamarole all over again.
The 118-page bill — less than one-tenth the length of the original edition’s 1,547 pages — will fund the government at current levels until March 14, 2025.
It also provides $100 billion in disaster relief for hurricane-hit states and farmers while also extending agricultural and other food subsidies in the so-called “farm bill” for one year.
Scrapped provisions include a 4% raise for members of Congress, a proposal to restrict pharmacy benefit managers from billing insurance more than they pay for drugs.
It also struck funding for the renovation and relinquishment of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to city officials in Washington, DC.
Just as a counterpoint, 95% of our 400-person lab would have shut down (and did in previous ones), though if you count contractors who keep working offsite it’s more like 75%. Most of us do projects with a 2+ year cycle so the end dates just get pushed back.
Also worth noting that there’s a political difference: Obama wanted to maximize the pain to show that losing the government hurt, while Trump wanted to show that gov shutdowns were harmless. So there were many more “deemed essential” employees in the 2019 shutdown compared to 2013 (again, specific to my agency).
Not really – they did pass the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2024, signed into law… in March 2024 when that FY was already almost halfway through. So they ran the last Pelosi budget into last February.
That’s the GOP line.
I believe that it was to transfer 177 acres of unused land, now containing a decrepit stadium, from the federal to local government. There was no funding.
See:
It may be “pretty small” to your parochial view, but for anyone swept up in furloughs, and especially those required to work without pay (in essence, precluding them from taking on temporary work while they are still not receiving a paycheck) the effect can be severe, as landlords, mortgage holders, and grocery stores don’t accept IOUs on future income. And while actual federal employees will (presumably) get compensated for their lost income, contractors do not. The last time we had a big shutdown, we were able to continue working because our projects are fully funded years in advance, and the ‘critical’ government program managers and Space Force members kept working but support staff were furloughed and support contractors put on indefinite hold…which meant no security staff, no contracting, no maintenance, no transpo, minimal range support, et cetera; in essence even those of us who were funded were limited in the work that we could do. It’s a stupid, needless waste of time, money, and effort because the Congress literally cannot manage to do the one required task of passing a budget.
You are correct that Social Security checks get sent out because SSA workers are largely considered essential and are required to show up to work. Guess how many of them get paid in a ‘government shutdown’.
I would say that the United States—with the world’s most robust economy, comprehensive literacy, massive defense establishment, and Constitutionally-recognized freedoms—is a shining beacon of how democracy should work, and we should be able to do better. But unfortunately it is becoming increasingly difficult to make such a claim with a straight face.
Stranger
Lets be realistic… 99% of all vets never had a bullet flying their way.
They are or were mostly doing the same work as in a civil job - upkeep, maintainance, shuffling papers and documents, and general y trying to look busy.
They do one thing substancially more often than civilians, … rushing somewhere to be waiting there for hours.
Yeah, but it is the admittedly small number of door kickers you have to worry about, and as much as they might proclaim to hate socialism and (mostly) revere Trump, once their special privileges get taken away they’ll change their tune, at least with regard to that issue. Even Reagan was bright enough to back away from trying to cut veteran benefits and even elevated the VA to a Cabinet-level position.
Stranger
Indeed. One of my best friends works for a big government contractor, on things with security clearances (so I only have a vague idea of what she does). Her work, and her company’s work, are absolutely stopped when there’s a government shutdown, and she isn’t compensated for that lost work time when the government restarts.
Thank you for the clarification.
I copy, pasted relevant portions of the NY Post article as the link was not getting posted here smh due to error msg.
Sure, completely agreed. Our work is “worth the government doing” vital (so I believe) but not “will hurt someone if delayed for a month” vital.
For example (not using my own job here) if our task was “this research will likely start to save kids from cancer in 2027” that’s vital/important work for sure, but month’s delay is really nothing - the only truly essential work on that time scale is the 1 person out of 20 who’s needed to keep the lab cultures or whatever from dying out day-to-day.
I skimmed through a few posts, so this was likely discussed. In addition to cancer research, a number of other things were changed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/12/20/musk-trump-children-health-debt/
These include children’s cancer research, food stamp theft mitigation, pharmacy benefit manager rules. junk ticket fees, Congress pay raises, deepfake harassment law and rules regarding Chinese investment.
Of course, the Senate has not yet passed the bill. And they are said to be doing this first.
The Senate will vote on a Social Security bill that would expand benefits for individuals who received smaller payouts because they had pensions or disability considerations and for spouses of recipients who received smaller payouts because they earned income from government pensions.
There may be six or seven amendment votes before the Senate takes up that bill. After that, the Senate will consider the continuing resolution passed by the House.
From Bluesky social media: Trump was right about one thing. Immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans. Musk just took his.
As I understand Musk’s on-its-face absurd opposition to bills which have a large number of pages, the idea is that every provision you mention should be a separate bill. And Congress only has time to pass a limited number of bills. So although Musk might say he is OK with all of this (except maybe the 3.8 percent congressional cost of living adjustment), in practice, under his plan, there is great risk that popular little bills, like the renewal of the current children’s cancer research program, will be left behind.
Hopefully, this stuff will prove too unpopular for Trump to keep indulging his oligarchs. One can hope.