Please do not break my post into sentence fragments so you can respond to statements in a disjointed, out of context manner.
We are in fundamental disagreement on the issue of who bears responsibility for a shutdown. You seem to feel that it is Democrats alone, regardless of what issue or reason, and that they are obligated to capitulate and concede to whatever the majority Republican Party wants. This is not the way democracy or democratic governance works; if you want to pass a bill or resolution and do not have sufficient votes to pass it, you have to compromise and make concessions to obtain the required votes. Democrats have made plenty of concessions to avoid a shutdown as made obvious with the passage of the OBBBA, and that has not been enough for Senate Republicans, who have not compromised on anything and have made it clear that they are unwilling to sit down and even discuss any compromise (and in the case of the House, have been procedurally blocked by Speaker Johnson refusing to call the House to session for nearly a month in an unprecedented breach of schedule). This refusal to consider or even discuss any compromise to keep the government marginally functioning is a gross abridgment of basic democratic norms.
It is also not at all how the Republicans have behaved or been expected to behave whenever they were the minority party. They were consistently intransigent and obstructive.
Regardless of what the threshold is, the majority party or coalition has to get sufficient support from minority parties or independents to pass their bill. If they don’t, they have to compromise until they can aggregate sufficient support. @Chessic_Sense seems to feel that Democrats are somehow obligated to concede to whatever Republicans want, and that they are disingenuous and by-default culpable by refusing to do so regardless of the issue, while Republicans should just have the expectation of getting what they want without concessions. This is not how democracy works.
The reality that conceding to this would materially hurt millions of people who are dependent upon those subsidies to afford any kind of health insurance, and that they seem happy to allow the Executive Branch to take their prerogative to control spending and authority over the effective disestablishment of federal agencies and mass termination of federal employees tells you everything you need to know about how concerned they are for the American people, and federal workers in particular.
It’s both parties fault. If I understand it correctly, D’s want to fund the Gov’t + ACA subsidies in one bill; they keep putting forward one bill like that and don’t get 60 votes. R’s just want to fund the Gov’t. They keep putting forward a clean bill and don’t get 60 votes.
With that, you either need to (1) compromise - not all the ACA stuff you want but not a clean bill - the solution is inherently somewhere in the middle. Or w/o compromise, (2) generate/react to public pressure/actual problems with a Gov’t being shutdown. Since we elect people who don’t run on compromise (R’s more than D’s in my mind) we just need to wait until one side cannot take the pressure any longer. Probably around Thanksgiving when flying will be a shitstorm d/t the shutdown - who gets blamed more for that (and all the rest).
I think the clean bill is the default setting - It’s a complete solution to the specific issue. If the D’s “cave” d/t pressure, they should only vote for a clean funding bill if they can also put forward a separate ACA subsidy bill. The ACA bill will fail, and D’s can later run on R’s voting that down in the mid-terms. “R’s raised your healthcare” is a much cleaner argument to make by not having it tied to the funding. It’s the minimum acceptable compromise I would go for because it’s hardly compromise at all. I think pressure to get me to do that kind of compromise is at least a month out.
Late: To be honest, I don’t actually know if a “clean” ACA subsidies bill is being brought now. I don’t think so. And I also think they need R’s help in procedural ways I don’t fully understand to allow Congress to put it to a vote - hence the “compromise” that R’s would have to make to get a clean subsidies bill voted on.
The fact is that the Republicans will not compromise. Because of that, they are responsible for the shutdown. Fact.
Donald Trump himself insisted that the Republicans not compromise with Democrats just days ago, and they do what he says. This is not a “both sides” issue, and it is not the Democrats’ fault. The Republicans are choosing to not budge, to not even try. They are causing this unilaterally. There is no arguing this, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.
This article does a great job of explaining it.
Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate with them on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say they won’t negotiate on the subsidies until Democrats vote to reopen the government.
If one side is willing to negotiate, and the other won’t, the side that won’t negotiate is to blame. Full stop.
The Republicans saying that they might be willing to negotiate if the Democrats give up their bargaining chip is so disingenuous, it’s amazing any informed person could fall for it.
If Democrats are being blamed, it might be due to the fact that genuine federal government websites feature messages like: You’re going to stop being paid because of the evil Democrat government shutdown.
I imagine that you could sway the opinions of lots of stupid people that way.
That goes back to the point that Democrats have never been very good at getting their story out. It matters now more than ever. The Republicans running the gummint are using exploiting their advantage.
It goes even further than that. The Republicans don’t even need to negotiate. If they wanted to, they could end the shutdown with no Democratic help at all, because they hold all of the majorities. The reason there’s a shutdown is because the Republicans want there to be a shutdown.
Trump and Republicans wipe their hind ends with the Hatch Act.
The website detailing the history of the White House features a picture of Hunter Biden in a bathtub.
Even the expert who thinks it’s legal still says it’s inappropriate. I mean, it’s clearly not legal or politicians would have been doing it for decades. The only reason they’re doing it now is because they have SCOTUS in their pocket.
Is it really true that a significant number of government workers have missed two paychecks?
My memory, as a retired federal employee, is that it used to be that your credit union would offer an interest-free loan, during shutdowns, up to the amount of your most recent net pay. It appears, from a bit of web searching, that many of the credit unions are NOT doing it this time. If I’m correct, this could be influencing the union.
The workers do not have to join an agency-associated credit union, but I think most of those living paycheck to paycheck would have..
? You’re just going to continue on saying “whatever Republicans want” and “regardless of the issue” even though I gave you two examples to the contrary? Why would you do that?
Now, then…separately…in regard to the second part of the quote above (which I have been asked to not break apart so as to respond clearly and concisely), the part that begins after the words “concessions” and begins with the word “This,” (Please take a moment to locate the relevant section in the part above… I trust you’ve now done so, and will henceforth continue.) I have the following reply:
That’s not how democracy works. How it works is you keep the democracy up and running at all times, and if that requires setting aside your differences to pass bills funding the things you both want to be funded, then you sign the damn bill. That’d be the clean CR.
Aw crap, there I go again multi-quoting. Dang.
The reality is that the CR does nothing to hurt anyone, and in fact alleviates the suffering of not just federal workers like me but the citizens we serve in our daily tasks. After all, the CR has literally nothing to do with subsidies of any sort and isn’t even about healthcare. It simply funds federal offices so that our air traffic controllers get paid for the work they do and our national parks can have the trash taken out. It is solely Washington Democrats, not even the rank and file citizens, who are attempting and failing to link the two issues, and their motivation, as has been well-stated, is not to actually get health funds but simply to resist Republicans in any way possible with whatever issue happened to be in front of them on October 1st.
Bullshit. You yourself in, what, 2013 shutdown (?) were saying Republicans should sign the clean CR. Now suddenly you don’t want the clean CR.
How much you guys wanna bet Der Trihs and others on this board will say today “Rs control the Senate. If they wanted to pass the CR, they could do that today without any Dem votes. Just use the nuclear option,” and then next week when that very thing happens, Der Trihs and others here will say “those dirty dogs, how dare they do such a thing."?
Then, of course, the week after that Republicans will pass some sort of ACA subsidy, say “We were always going to work on healthcare, but not while Dems held the country hostage. So, America, you’re welcome. Twice.” and they’ll dance on the Senate Democrats’ graves all the way to the midterms.
You know what’d be nice? If Democrats didn’t absolutely suck at politics.
YES! Have we not been clear about this? We aren’t being paid!
In my personal situation, I first burned all my accumulated PTO. So it was just a forced vacation. A few days later, that ran out and I went into time-debt with my employer. I now owe them about 4 months of work in order to get back to zero PTO. That banked PTO was supposed to be for traveling home for Thanksgiving and taking off Christmas Eve, but that’s now not possible. I was scheduled to be home with the kids while they’re on winter break, but now I have to work, so I guess my kids will have to stay with the neighbors or something. Maybe I’ll work nights. We don’t know.
On Thursday, I’ll sign a timesheet foregoing all pay this period, so I’ll get a $0 check in mid-November. My wife, on the other hand, never had any banked PTO to begin with, so she’s been on leave without pay for the entire month. The only reason we’ve had any money come in this month is because we’re paid in arrears, so it’s actually September money. November will be the “$0 month” even if we open up tomorrow.
Right, They wont even sit down and discuss. Look, the GOP has has a hate on for what they call “Obama-care” since it passed. This is their chance to cripple it.
If someone is paid bi-weekly and has received any pay this month, they haven’t missed two pay checks. At worst, they have missed one paycheck and received a reduced amount on the other.
I’d have thought you might like someone here questioning a federal union statement
I have no interest in addressing hypothetical ‘strawman’ arguments that don’t pertain to the actual issue at hand. Democrats have made it clear that they want to continue subsidies such that millions of people don’t face increases in their ACA premiums that would result in their having to lose insurance coverage; that was a position when the continuing resolution was passed without incorporating those provisions, and now Republicans (and unfortunately journalists, many of whom don’t seem to understand what a “clean CR” is) continue to repeat that the only ‘fair’ thing to do is pass the CR as stated without discussion or provision even if it means putting millions of people out of reach to insurance and medical treatment resulting in an estimated 50,000 excess deaths in the coming year. In fact, Senate Republicans could discuss, debate, and come to an agreement to add this provision in prompt fashion, garnering the necessary votes to fund the government in the interim and end the shutdown. Their argument for not doing so is “fiscal responsibility” which is beyond risible for a party that just approved the satirically named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and increased the federal debt by over a trillion dollars in the fastest accumulation of debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. In reality, they won’t discuss a provision because Donald Trump told them not to, and the GOP has become a literal proto-fascist death cult in utter thrall of their ‘leader’, doing and saying whatever he wants even if it is absurdly and demonstrably false.
I think what you mean here is that passing the CR doesn’t hurt you, and gets you and your fellow federal employees your due compensation. But Senate Republicans could achieve that in a day by merely making the concessions to get enough votes to pass the CR with already drafted provisions to extend ACA tax credits, at least to the point that the issue could be discussed without duress. Passing the ‘clean CR’ will, in fact, hurt millions of people who needed those subsidies even before insurance rates escalated and will not be able to afford insurance or access to health care without them. You’re losing PTO and a few paychecks; these are people who are literally losing access to lifesaving care and critical medicines such as insulin. I get that you don’t care about this, but many people with some sense of human empathy do. And regardless of whether you think it ‘right’ or not, Republicans need sixty votes to pass a resolution, so they need to make sufficient concessions to get the balance of votes from Democrats. A refusal to even consider compromise––again, at the behest of Donald Trump––is the cause of this utter impasse. You can spin this however you like but democratic governance doesn’t mean getting everything you want just because you have some narrow margin of power; it means having to find a compromise that is sufficiently acceptable to enough people to actually pass legislation. Pitching a temper tantrum because Democrats won’t give in is an infantile response by Republicans who are coincidentally avoiding holding town halls and other meetings with constituents to explain their position. They’re not doing that because they know their constituents already side with them; they’re doing it because they don’t want to be yelled at and shamed by constituents who don’t feel well served by members of Congress who won’t do the job of keeping the country running and are acting in service of their God-King Trump instead of the people whom they were elected to represent.
