Kevin McCarthy Kills Bipartisan Senate Bill to Avert Shutdown

It also shuts down the WIC program, which helps ensure food security for 7,000,000 women and children.

Why waste money on the coast guard when we can build a perfect wall!

I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for military service members.

The GOP has repeatedly spat in their face and they continue to vote for them in overwhelming fassion, because "macho" or some bullshit.

Other federal workers I do feel bad for.

Fuck the GOP.

CBP (aka the US Border Patrol) will also not get paid during the shutdown. They care so much about border security that they aren't paying the agents and officers manning "the wall".

His speakership is over.

If he allows Democrats to save his ass, Republican voters will despise him, costing him paid gigs as a Republican pundit in their echo chambers where Republican voters go to have their fucked up biases reconfirmed in between My Pillow ads.

Americans have permitted greed to become the first and only consideration in every facet of American life. That has consequences, well deserved consequences.

This is what happens when hyper-individualism and greed become core societal values instead of the severe character defects that harm others they actually are. There isn't some magic switch that flips for people when they become politicians that makes them selfless. They take the dog eat dog, capitalist, "I got mine and fuck you," rational self-interest core American values that we fully celebrate and mandate in every other aspect of American life with them, and vote on legislation solely on the basis of what they personally have to further gain. As long as we encourage our people to be selfish as a culture, as we do to the extreme, our leadership will be a reflection of that. So long as a typical American parent is proud of their oil executive child for making lots of money, instead of ashamed at the harm their child's chosen industry does to society, we will have McCarthys in charge.

No honor among capitalists. Just a race down into oblivion. We chose to keep the delusion of making "fuck you" money alive at the expense of being a society that cares about what happens to each other and future generations. And sadly there's more Americans that somehow still want to stay on that course, as we're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires who don't want to be hindered by what we still owe to society when it's our turn to punch down.

"I'm not rich, but someday I will be, and then all the poories better watch their step!"

-The perfectly healthy American mindset

All he has to do is negotiate with the Democrats.

He did. The Budget was negotiated with President Biden back in June / July. What's happened is that he can't get the Freedom Caucus to vote for what he negotiated. It's ridiculous.

This is his negotiation. It's incredibly weak sauce, but that's where he's at. Negotiations hit impasses all the time. He has to signal to the Republican voters and his colleagues that he won't give a dime to Ukraine unless they build some kind of "not wall" to prevent scary Mexicans from flying into America and overstaying their visa.

The problem isn't forgetting, the problem is making them go against the programming they're being fed by whatever propaganda outlet they choose to consume. Those institutions just launder shit ideas and convince the viewer that they are correct and everyone else is wrong. We'd just be "reminding" them of something that "isn't true."

I strongly believe our biggest problem in the US is the conflict between the need for a free press and the press abusing the absolute shit out of that, being literal propaganda outlets.

Most Americans think that literally every decision in DC gets filtered through POTUS, because they don't have a viable concept of what the function of government is or even how the government is structured. A shutdown will be seen by the majority of the population as "Biden's doing".

McCarthy isn't a sociopath. He's just Reek. bites sausage

Never forget that asshole corps like Toyota went back to funding GOP members despite the fact they tried to end our Democracy.

Impasse*

Affects*

Exactly.

My opinion is that ANY legislation that is passed in one chamber MUST be brought to a vote in the other. No quietly killing bills that clearly already have legs. If you want to squash things originating in your chamber, fine, but not something already in motion.

It's what speakers do. Pelosi was notorious for not bringing important issues to a vote because she "didn't have the votes." I'm not saying it's not some serious bullshit, I'm just saying.

Trump wants to blame Biden. I don’t think that’s going to go so well

I think that's expecting too generous a response from voters. To be clear, I don't want a shutdown even if MAGA Republicans are 100% blamed for it. There's just too many people that will be hurt by this.

But unfortunately, those dumb motherfuckers will immediately forget who held the government hostage and damaged the entire country to do it. I say that as judgementally as possible because they are willfully stupid, as long as they can hurt those they don't agree with... And make no mistake: this will hurt the economy, and unfortunately even "moderate" Republicans will blame Biden for that. No one but Trump wins from a government shutdown...

edit: autocorrect

Trump Putin wants a shut down.

fixed it

Send em all home and have new elections.

Lindsay graham comes to mind.

It's not totally unilateral. If a majority of members sign onto what's called a discharge petition, legislation can advance without the speaker's approval. The issue is:

1. There's a process and it takes about 30 days to do that.

2. Republicans typically refuse to sign onto these when in the majority, even the moderates.

His literal function is to decide what gets voted on. You smelt past a lot of class.

He could neuter the MAGA Rs if he was willing to get the Dems and the rest of the Rs to vote for this bill. The fringe could call for a vote on his speakership--but he could negotiate to keep it. Dems would love to neuter the fringe republicans. The Republicans would love to. They just need someone to sack up and actually do it.

Aren't they just likely to install someone far crazier and from the Treason Caucus though?

This Congress has the insane rule that a single person can force a vote of no confidence in the speaker. McCarthy fought hard against this rule being included (first vote of a new Congress is agreeing to rules. He wanted to be speaker without this rule, but didn't have enough of a margin to win without the hardliners). He knew, going in to this Congress, that one crazy person has insane leverage over him.

So, if he tries to work with a moderate group, his speakership is immediately threatened. This is why it took so long to elect him as speaker. He knew the position it would put him in and tried every single angle he could to prevent the single motion of no confidence rule.

Not McCarthy's fault directly, but he's been set up to be one of the least powerful, least effective speakers ever.

There is a way to bypass McCarthy via a discharge petition. Get enough House members to sign it (218, I believe) and the bill goes to the floor whether McCarthy wants it to or not.

The downside is that this takes time to accomplish (for various reasons). I think the Democrats are already starting that as a backup, but it won't be done before the government shuts down.

Without the discharge petition, the only way the House can vote on a bill is if McCarthy says they can. And the only way McCarthy will say they can is if the Freedom Caucus approves it.

Ok, so there's a lot going on here.

Democrats are voting no on all the proposals in the House, because they're a divergence from the spending levels McCarthy himself negotiated in May to avoid hitting the debt ceiling. Hard-line Republicans are voting no on the budget proposals from the House and Senate because they're not enough of a divergence and only gives them some of what they asked for (even though what they're already getting is a non-starter in the Democrat-controlled Senate).

McCarthy could present the stopgap bill from the Senate, or a bill that adheres to the previously negotiated spending limits, and they would almost 100% pass with support from moderate Democrats and Republicans overriding the no votes from the freedom caucus and a few progressive Democrats, but McCarthy is afraid to do that because the wing nuts are threatening to oust him from the speakership if he doesn't cave to their demands.

Making matters worse, House Democrats are pissed about McCarthy opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden over baseless allegations, so they have even less desire then normal to accommodate McCarthy in his efforts to renege on the very deal he negotiated less than 5 months ago.

The Democrats have zero responsibility for this mess, and zero desire to rescue a feckless and ineffective speaker from the consequences of his own dumb choices. And make no mistake: the only way this ends is McCarthy growing the balls to tell the wing nuts to get fucked, or the house bypassing him entirely with a discharge petition. The only variable is whether that happens before or after a government shutdown, and it looks like that's going to be after at this point.

First you'd have to find moderate Republicans in the House, they're a very rare breed that are nearly extinct.

In short, blame partisan primaries. Bipartisanship is seen as aiding the manifestation of evil here on Earth. And that can cost any GOPer the race, even to a no name challenger.

This holds true even for Biden district Republicans, because their most active voters either subscribe to a cult of Reagan or cult of Trump world view. These cult voters dominate low turnout primaries, even when their overall numbers aren't very large.

We could reform elections and have non partisan primaries or even RCV. But that would sap power away from political parties and cultists. Where is the fun in that?

Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but I think it's weird to frame it as if it's the dems who are responsible for this shit. They give the reps an inch and they'll shut down the government because they just decided that they wanted five more inches.