Pelosi (may) have nothing to lose but members of her caucus might. She only serves at their pleasure. Same with McConnell in the senate.
All I am saying here is Pelosi/McConnell still have people to answer to even if they, personally, could not give a shit.
The biggest reason GOP politicians don’t want to break with Trump is that they’ll lose a primary to a far right candidate.
I respectfully disagree. I think the real reason is that they both have the same underlying goal, which is screwing over Democrats. They just go about in a more politically correct (to use the term literally) way than Trump does.
I doubt Trump cares specifically about screwing over Democrats. He’s probably content as long as he’s screwing over somebody.
I assume Trump will soon get a bill with money for border security that he can claim is a win and the Dems will point out that there is no money for a wall so they won. Whatever - the shutdown can’t continue.
The shut down is just the beginning. Pelosi will continue to control the situation. When the STOU does occur, it will not be the traditional love fest. It may resemble the British Parliament.
Don’t know for sure. Haven’t heard stories and most people I talk to don’t seem mobilized over the issue. They haven’t made a deal, so that is one clue they aren’t being pressured to do so.
There were those govt workers who had a protest demanding money extorted from taxpayers, but that’s about it. I hear mostly “SMH another Trump moment” and a little “They should be building the wall anyway, fuck ‘em” from people unfamiliar with my political leanings as I don’t make that a part of my public life.
Sure, but the Democrats have a cause now- many of them got elected specifically to resist Trump and the GOP shenanigans.
The Republicans don’t quite have that level of ideological drive this time around from what I can tell; they’re just relying on party discipline more than any deep-seated ideological need for this wall.
Trump is carrying out one of his campaign promises, ‘draining the swamp’. Just not the way we expected it to happen. The surprising thing is how little things have been affected by the shutdown (so far), except for 800,000 paychecks, if that’s the correct number. This may be an indication of how much bloat exists in our gov’t.
The impact has been small because people are working without pay. The country would grind to a complete halt if every unpaid “essential” worker refused to work.
I think what’s going to happen over time is that the really essential positions will be funded as the obvious need for them arises. When it becomes apparent which jobs are non-essential, those people will be not be returning. This may be the best outcome that can be expected.
I have yet to hear one person say with a straight face that Trump has made any progress regarding his promise to “drain the swamp.” We’re deeper, by far, in the swamp then we’ve ever been.
If you Republicans thought all those government workers were so non-essential, why didn’t you cut their jobs two years ago?
Again, we’re not going to save money by not paying the government workers. We’re still going to have to pay them, only we won’t have the work they would have done.
Or do you expect we’ll be able to hire people to work for us, and when they’ve done the work refuse to pay them? Yeah, Trump does it all the time. You wanna be like Donald Trump when you grow up?
I don’t think it’s as easy as looking at a job and drawing a clear, bright line between “essential” and “non-essential,” especially when there’s disagreement on what those terms actually mean.
So I’m skeptical that this will happen.
Yeah, but as the shut down drag on and on, some of those federal workers are going to find other jobs, and not come back to work for the government.
I suggest that the fact that you personally have not perceived much change may not be the best indicator whether “things have been affected.”
I am all for the intelligent and rational identification and elimination of unnecessary government programs and staff, but this approach is neither intelligent nor rational. I’ll also offer my impression that when gov’t staff positions are eliminated, those duties are quite often assigned to contractors.
I’m not WISHING for it. I’m saying only that amount of tragedy would get enough republicans on the side of ending the shutdown. That’s why it should happen in Oklahoma – if it happens in California they’ll say God is punishing them, we shouldn’t interfere.
“intelligent and rational identification”. Seems to never happen. All Congress does is grow the government, and in many cases, positions are created to compensate people who provided support for the congressperson at election time. The ‘duties’, if there are any, are only contracted out to pay off, you guessed it, people who provided support for the congressperson at election time.
Not seeing any ill effects from one month out is no way to determine if someone is redundant or not. For all we know some of the people working might not be needed, and some who are not might be needed in the medium to long term – the slam dunk example for this is auditors, who might not catch something in a month but most certainly are worth it to have so we know where the money is even going.
Bullshit. Just one example.
Garbage, feces take toll on national parks amid shutdown
Cite?