Posted on 10/01/2025 9:07:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The surprising thing is not that the federal government has shut down. It would have been surprising if it did not. Each side thinks it has the cards and that it has put the other in a bad position. The result is that the budget feud could last for months, ending with a temporary armistice that satisfies no one.
There is little incentive for either side to shut down the shutdown. Washington Post columnist Paul Kane notes that most Senators have little reason to compromise: “very few senators feel the political pressure that usually comes with calamitous events like a federal agency shutdown. Most sit in safe seats, many with reelection campaigns a distant concern.”
Democrats are apparently reckoning that the suspension of health tax credits starting in December will cow Republican legislators into capitulating over the first shutdown since 2019. As the financier Steven Rattner points out in the New York Times, the GOP has effectively subverted ObamaCare by repealing the expensive tax breaks that prompted millions to enroll. Now some 20 million Americans face sharply higher premiums. According to Rattner, “Even upper-income Americans who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges will be hurt by the repeal of this tax break.
That’s because as coverage gets more expensive, healthier people drop their insurance first, forcing companies to raise premiums on their remaining customers to maintain profitability.” Democrats are wagering that enough Republican moderates will crack to ensure that they can reach a compromise to their liking.
President Trump and his advisors, however, believe that they can traumatize Democrats. As Trump put it, in a shutdown “we can get rid of a lot of things we don’t want, and they would be Democrat things.” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has been preparing for that. This could be Vought’s finest hour, or, if you’re a fan of big government, the day of the jackal. “There are all manners of authorities to be able to keep this administration’s policy agenda moving forward,” Vought told Fox News, “and that includes reducing the size and scope of the federal government, and we will be looking for opportunities to do that.”
Vought resembles someone who was crafted in a laboratory by the Claremont Institute to overthrow the New Deal. He’s drafted plans to terminate wide swaths of the so-called administrative state, starting with many of the federal employees who are currently on administrative leave. One such emailed me on Tuesday evening to report that they are “hearing that the Office of Personnel and Management has orders to start jettisoning the Ballastexistenzen, or ballast existences, at midnight” – a sardonic reference to the Nazi propaganda term for those deemed unfit, undesirable and unnecessary.
The problems with the calculations of the Democrats might turn out to be twofold. The first is that Trump and his coterie exhibit little desire to keep the federal government humming. The reverse may be the case. Like a Romanov emperor, Trump wants to rule by ukase. If there are fewer federal employees around to obstruct his grand plans, so much the better. All Trump requires, so the thinking goes, is a functioning military and ICE. The rest can be cobbled together.
The second problem that could confound Democrats is the question of whether they really can remain united as they are called upon cast vote after vote to on Republican legislation to reopen government, or whether they are the ones who will crack, as they face calls to stop behaving like an obstructionist faction. Already three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican plan on Tuesday night – Senators John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto and Angus King. Fetterman observed that a shutdown would be “the ideal for Project 2025”.
Others remain undaunted. “They want us to blink first,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced on MSNBC. “We have to be the consequence.” No one should underestimate how consequential the shutdown may prove for Trump and his foes alike.
Can somebody explain why it takes 60 votes to end this shutdown? If Republican don’t go nuclear to end this unconstitutional requirement, THEY will be responsible for it.
What does that even mean?
I hope no one blinks until after a whole bunch of civil servants are permanently laid off.
This is completely false. The DEMOCRATS set the expiration date for the subsidies when they had control of all 3 branches of government. They OWN this, and for some reason the republican's aren't pointing this out.
Illegals & health care cost coverage:
Boss, I need health care cost coverage!
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
***************************************
Unemployed health care cost coverage:
If persons make 100% or more of the federal poverty level but under 400%, they qualify for PPACA subsidies of up to 98%.
Get a gig job. Rent out a room.
Just get the normal appropriations bills passed and move on past this farce and theater of CRs.
CRs should not be necessary.
Democrats and only Democrats voted to shut down the government. Entertaining any other narrative is a lie.
It’s the first of the month and I was out and about this morning.
Grocery store was a bit busier and lots of folk out and about as well.
Gubmint shutdown here had ZERO effect.
The DNC is casting off their old Black voters and replacing them with illegal voters.
The longer the shut-down continues the more aware their Black voters will be of their replacement. But then the Democrats have always sold them down the river when they were of no more use to them.
First, it is entirely constitutional per Article I Section 5:
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.
The word "cloture," derived from the French word "clôture," means closure, or ending debate before taking a vote. Both chambers of Congress have cloture, but they implement it in different ways. The House of Representatives has a cloture rule, and the Senate has a cloture vote.
In the House of Representatives, there are 435 voting members. That is too many people to allow all 435 to debate for or against a bill before moving to a vote. To handle this, the House created the Cloture Rule (not specifically called such) in their Rules of the House, specifically RULE XVII Decorum and Debate.
Generally, each side is given two hours to debate a bill, with Managers assigned to monitor and allot the time given to each member to speak before moving to a full House vote (usually no more than five minutes each). Special time is given to members for introducing amendments, and each side gets a final amount of time for one member to make final closing arguments.
Then the House of Representatives takes the vote on the measure.
In the Senate, where there are only 100 members, debate is handled differently (see Rules of the Senate). Once the members vote to open debate (generally by voting to accept the recommendations of the relevant committee), the Senate moves to floor debate. Senators are not allowed to rise to debate a measure more than twice in a single legislative day. A Senator may speak in debate for as long as he is physically capable, unless he is asked a point of order or he breaches Senate rules and is asked to sit down by the Presiding Officer.
According to Senate RULE XXII Precedence of Motions, if one-sixth of the members (16 Senators) make a motion to end debate, the Senate has two days to consider the motion before calling for a vote to end debate and move to the floor vote on the measure. That vote to end the debate is called the Cloture Vote, and requires three-fifths of the members (60 Senators) to agree to end debate.
Once cloture is obtained and debate is ended, the Senate moves to a final floor vote on the measure.
-PJ
Waiting for my local press to publish a tear jerker on a single mom who just got laid off from some government agency.
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