Yup. And the reason is terrible is that he believes that if his counterparty is happy with the outcome of negotiations, then he must have done something wrong. The only acceptable outcome is that he flexes his muscles until the other side of the table is unhappy. Democrats should keep this in mind…
Let me add that I’m under no illusion that Pelosi is likely to succeed in getting the pathway to citizenship. It’s more likely that she will fail, forcing McConnell to cave and send a clean bill for Trump to sign and/or face veto override. Maybe Trump prefers his emergency declaration to the lure of Congressional funding.
But even if Pelosi fails, it was worth a shot.
Well, yeah. McConnell is evil. His goals are bad. But that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. Given his goals, what he’s doing makes sense. And he can be bargained with to achieve non-evil goals.
The only way this ends is if people being forced to work for free start quitting for not getting a paycheck. As long as the essential workers are working for free most people won’t see much impact from the government shutdown, they see things still working relatively smooth and it perpetuates the myth that “see look at all this money we could be saving”.
From people I’ve talked to there’s a disconnect between “parts of the government are shut down” and “people are being forced to work for no pay in order to keep things running”.
The proposed counteroffer should be “OK if the fucking wall is so important to you, then we get immediate citizenship for current Dreamers who’ve been in the country for 10 years and eventual citizenship for all current and future similarly situated ones. And we fund the government for a full year and raise the debt ceiling in the bargain. In fact we change the law so that part is automatic.”
Again, they already do that when they make the budget.
It’s unconstitutional to default, so the second vote is 100% stupid and basically revoting the thing they already voted for.
“Let’s take a vote, we’re going to spend this amount on these things.”
“Agreed. Vote passes.”
“Now lets vote if we’re going to spend the money on those things we agreed on.”
It’s the same fucking vote, only with extra bullshit and grandstanding. If you have a problem with the money being spent, then don’t put it in the fucking budget.
What’s the consequence of the debt ceiling, exactly? We’ve never defaulted and if we did the consequences would be dire. Instead it’s just used as a political tool.
The consequences for overspending should exist at the ballot box.
Thanks for the explanation. If it amounts to procedural bullshit then why does the debt ceiling exist in the first place if not to limit uncontrolled spending?
If you vote to spend money, then you have spent it.
It’s bullshit to say, “Yeah, I want to do all these things!” and then later say, “I refuse to pay for those things.”
If you want to save money, then do that when you pass the budget. Put less stuff in the budget.
The problem we have now, is that you have idiots who vote to put stuff in the budget, but then refuse to increase the debt limit so that they can pretend to be budget hawks.
