Should Democratic Senators play nice with Republicans and support the continuing resolution?

Politics & Elections
181

When you do not look at the alternatives, this sounds good. But Britain was massively rearming in 1938 and 1939, while Germany went along at the normal Hitler-era pace. Fighting the Battle of Britain in 1940 was a better idea than fighting it in 1938, as Chamberlain’s generals were telling him. Churchill did not argue against this calculation — what he said was that the treatment of Czechoslovakia was dishonorable. I like Churchill overall, but the argument against Schumer sounds to me more based on a Churchillian when-out-of-office desire to be pure than on the practicalities of minimizing Trump regime damage.

What was the GOP concession Democrats would have gotten in return for making the current near shutdown of EPA and AID legal? The primary claim I have seen, in favor of shutdown, was that it would have helped the Democrats in the polls. That seems to me highly speculative.

182

I thought the claim waa that they could force a change in the propsed budget, as opposed to not doing so.

183

Has anyone seen an attempt to compare what the Rs could’ve done during a shutdown, as opposed to what they appear to be able to do currently?

Who would’ve benefitted/been harmed under the different options?

184

I bet that Schumer et al’s stockholders think they would have been harmed.

Longer term considerations were not on their radar.

185

Yes, I have read that.

But force what?

The Democrats cannot force anything because this administration is not law-abiding.

I believe that, In the past, when there was a shutdown, what stayed open was determined by the Antideficiency Act. This prevents expenditure of unappropriated funds for popular but legally non-essential uses like keeping national parks and Head Start open.

Here’s why federal employees had to close popular activities in past shutdowns:

When I was a federal employee, I was warned to obey this law. It meant that I couldn’t, say, just call a roofer if my office ceiling sprung a leak. Hiring the roofer had to go through a process so the payment would be from appropriated funds. If I called that roofer on my own, the government, then being a fair-minded organization, would pay them, but I would face discipline for violating the Antideficiency Act. If I had a corrupt motive,I faced arrest. This illustrates how the Act works. The courts do not stop the payment – they stop the person authorizing the payment, whether to a contractor or employee, in the event the Justice Department charges the lawbreaker.

Now that we have a lawless administration, they (probably means OMB, headed by right wing extremist Russell Vought) can just order employees to violate the Antideficiency Act. Democrats who wanted a shutdown were effectively daring OMB to do just that. If there had been a shutdown, I expect the Trumpers would have taken the dare and kept just the parts of government they like open until the end of the fiscal year. A few federal employees would resign rather than follow an order to violate the Antideficiency Act, but that just facilitates the administration – this time legally – replacing honest employees with right wing extremists.

Everyone know that this Justice Department is not going to charge lawbreakers who do what Trump says. That’s part of the reason for Trump’s speech to the Justice Department yesterday.

Maybe I’m wrong. IANAL. But it seems plausible that SCOTUS is more likely to stop the administration from violating the Impoundment Control Act – which it is violating – than the Antideficiency Act.

186

Would you have preferred “crudité” Oz? You go with what you have. I’d have voted for him too (and been profoundly disappointed) had I still been living in PA. I wonder if that stroke destroyed the judgment area of his brain. The only thing to do is primary him. Josh Shapiro?

I am very disappointed in Dick Durbin, the senator I did vote for. But what can I do?

187

Support a primary challenger next year.

188

Gee, it sure is a good thing we didn’t let the CR fail, otherwise Trump would just be able to shut down anything he doesn’t like.

189

Of course he can shut down anything he doesn’t like. Who said otherwise? Who even thought otherwise? Maybe you can supply a link, but most commentators knew better, whatever their opinion on the shutdown.

The question is whether there is legal way to successfully challenge this afternoon’s apparent firing of all VOA journalists.

If Schumer had caved to demands of the Democratic Party base, today’s VOA shutdown would have been part of the larger government shutdown, and thus would have almost surely been legal. Now that Trump is taking the action by decree, it is almost surely illegal. Maybe Roberts and/or Barrett will fail to recognize that. But now there is a reasonable chance of this elimination of a media outlet, just because Trump didn’t like their coverage, being reversed. In the context of a fiscal year shutdown, the VOA was gone for the duration of the American autocracy.

This afternoon’s VOA shutdown thus vindicates Chuck Schumer.

190

Except that the CR made it legal.

191

Re the last post, I looked at the CR earlier to try to vindicate that claim:

House Resolution 1968 Text

Grokking this is hard work because you have to go back to the underlying referenced appropriation bills from last year. So I may have missed it. But I did not spot right off language justifying the claim that the CR allows the zeroing out of entire agencies such as the Agency for Global Media. If you have that, please provide. Otherwise, I guess we will wait to see what courts say.

192

Here’s how one congresswoman describes it;

And here’s Public Citizen;

And another analysis;

Here’s a link to the fact sheet in question;

193

That sounds like the perennial GOP demand for :“regular order.” That’s already gone as a possibility. Except for D.C. school and other funding, which it looks like they will now get, none of the stuff in that Congressional Progressive Caucus wish list was going to happen with a shutdown.

Your claim was that the CR allows zeroing out of a whole agency, in this case the Agency for Global Media. Nothing in your links document how that could be. The CR references last year’s appropriations bills that mention all agencies. I find more plausible the claim that the CR allows shifting around money inside an agency like EPA, so maybe they could spend more on superfund sites while zeroing out Environment Justice. Lots of luck getting the Roberts court to stop that, shutdown or no shutdown and, remember, what the Trumpers really want is to shut down the great majority of EPA, not just move money around.’

Trump said he didn’t want a shutdown. I put this in the same category as his claim to want to give Canada senators and electoral votes AKA statehood. These are brilliant lies. As an example of the brilliance, my mother, who is generally anti-Trump, nonetheless heard them in the news and latches on to them as evidence Trump isn’t that bad. He doesn’t want a shutdown! He wants peaceful unity with our northern neighbor! But in reality, he is that bad. The idea that he would negotiate to give the Democrats something in return for ending a shutdown is mythical. He would be an idiot not to grab onto the shutdown as justification to essentialize everything he wants to keep, and you just don’t get to being the near-dictator of country with 330 million people by being an idiot.

194

And yet here we are.

195

Thanks for the links, Smapti, but they don’t really address how the admin whould have had LESS ability to wreak havoc in the event of a protracted shutdown. Or how vaious portions of the public would have been harmed more in the short and long runs.

My data point: for the past 15 years or so, I and my office have been designated “essential,” so for all practical purposes we just continued doing business as usual during shutdowns. I forget what happened in my previous federal job.

196

In Trump’s first term he capitulated after air traffic controllers who were deemed essential stayed home.

We’re obviously dealing with a much crazier administration but there are federal government stoppages that could hurt them still.

197

This much crazier administration is less likely to care if others are hurt, unfortunately.

198

Silver lining:
The Dems are attempting to engage. Fight caucus Senators made vids on social media (eg Corrie Booker and Adam Schiff). They weren’t that polished, but neither are GOP efforts: the medium hasn’t yet been mastered. But showing up is important: the goal is shifting public opinion, not winning Oscars.

Schumer gave an hour interview/podcast at the NYT, with transcript yesterday afternoon (Sat). So the Dems aren’t braindead.

The interview covered the latest vote in a couple of paragraphs. Here’s what Schumer said. Question in bold, as in original;

Senator, a lot has happened since we spoke on Monday, and you’ve been at the center of most of it. In our first conversation, you said you had a plan going forward to fight Republicans, but then, only a few days later, it looks as if your own party is in a civil war. Do you think that you made the wrong choice? I don’t. I think it was a very, very difficult decision between two bad options, a partisan Republican C.R. [continuing resolution] and a shutdown that Musk and Trump wanted. For me, the shutdown of the government would just be devastating and far worse than the Republican C.R. Let me explain: A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown. Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.

Isn’t this just — Wait, let me just finish, Lulu. It can last forever. There is no off ramp. One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone. And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power. So, in conclusion, I knew this would be an unpopular decision. I knew that. I know politics. But I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen because weeks and months from now, things would be far worse than they even are today, that I had to do what I had to do.

IMHO, if there really is no offramp, Schumer wins the argument. But I’m not convinced of that. He might be right. I don’t know.

Even if there is an offramp, the Trump admin could slow-roll the rehiring process. Another point of uncertainty. At any rate, I’m going to need some expert analysis from an analyst, as opposed to a political player.

During an extended shutdown, you lose whatever power the courts have. Do the courts actually have power now? The New York Times has a lawsuits tracker. The general pattern is challenge, injunction, decision, appeal, ?. We haven’t gotten to the end point yet when we can say the courts are toothless. And Trump’s popularity is trending downwards.

I think you need to unask your question. All admins go through the process above, except that there’s no question mark and the starting point isn’t blatantly illegality. Also, prior to McConnell refusing to hold hearings on Merrick Garland, the Supreme Court wasn’t corrupted. So yeah, the republic is disintegrating. Senate Dem leadership has feet of clay. But they aren’t oblivious.

199

Chuck Schumer is basically at the point of trying to bail water out of lifeboat with a spoon. He wanted to prevent a shutdown and the wholesale savaging of government agencies and institutions by facilitating a slower accumulation of lacerations, impalements, and partial amputations until the body over government bleeds out. At this point, I think the American public is better served by seeing exactly what the Republicans are doing and not trying to slow-roll it in hopes that a miracle will happen and the GOP will find the courage that it has sold away for the last ten years in order to ascend to and hold power. Of course, this would require the Democrats to also find the courage to actually stand up for principles they supposedly avow even though too few seem to be willing to do so when put to the test.

Stranger

200

Yes. But the difference is that the slow accumulation occurs with the court system in the mix, while the quick solution curbs court power completely before the shut down ends, and partially (how much? who knows?) after the shut down ends.

Also, the economic environment is likely to turn down over the next 30 days. And it probably will turn bad over the next 120 days. That’s plan A. We don’t have a plan B. Yikes.

Speaking of which, the Dems get another bite at the apple when the debt ceiling is hit. I say they should not take it: we are trying to prop our nations institutions, one of which is, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

The next leverage point is in the Fall when the CR expires. The odds of the Dems standing up to the GOP at that point are lower, given that the Dems capitulated the first time. The legal, political, and/or economic environment will be substantially different at that point. That’s not reassuring; it’s just a highly likely prediction.

In 2026 the voters will make some big decisions. Under optimistic and historical scenarios, the Dems will win at least one of the two houses. But our institutions will be severely degraded. It’s not good. It’s bad.