9 ms·

My concern is that we will end up in a state of perpetual government "shutdown". The republicans, instead of reopening the entire government, will simply choose

by ipython 11mo ago

My concern is that we will end up in a state of perpetual government "shutdown". The republicans, instead of reopening the entire government, will simply choose agencies to fund in order to keep the pain felt by the American people just low enough so they don't get fired (ala office space). Once that happens, Congress has basically iced itself out. Oversight from unfriendly government agencies? No worries, they're shut down because they're unpaid. And clearly this demonstrates the executive needs more power, since Congress is completely frozen. Finally, the Supreme Court is no longer an issue either, since that's not funded either. Someone tell me why this couldn't happen.

ares623 11mo ago
Speed running to become an actual developing nation. This is what millions of migrants are trying to escape from. Ironic, for all parties involved (well, except for the ones on top of course)
- donmcronald 11mo ago
  > Speed running to become an actual developing nation. That's what it looks like from the outside, but I can't understand what the gain is. Who benefits? The result of the middle class was massive advancement and an equally massive increase in standard of living for the wealthy who captured most of the gains. What do they gain from stagnating innovation and a lack of education, services, etc.? It makes me think of the old Olympic and sports videos. The participants basically suck because they're coming from a small pool of people wealthy enough to not need a job. Do they really want the pool of candidates competing to become doctors, etc. to be smaller which will end up lowering the overall quality for them? Or do they think they'll simply hire the best and brightest from other countries that are investing in their citizens?
  - bryant 11mo ago
    "better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" is the expression and idea you're looking for. Alternatively "better to rule among the miserable than to serve among the great." It's a consistent theme with most autocracies.
  - estimator7292 11mo ago
    Short term profit extraction for the already obscenely-wealthy. That's it, that's the only goal.
  - lamontcg 11mo ago
    The ridiculously wealthy view the system as a strictly zero-sum game, and they want to keep everything they have, and deny the rest of the population of everything. They understand this isn't sustainable, so they're fortifying bunkers and buying up islands. The days of Henry Ford capitalists who think their workers should be paid enough to buy their products seems to be unfashionable (even though he was a Nazi supporting racist, he had his head screwed on better than they do). The end game of full on narcissistic capitalism is coming. Hopefully the Henry Ford types wake the fuck up and do something about their peers losing the fucking plot entirely.
  - vkou 11mo ago
    > Who benefits? People who would rather be kings of shit mountain, than rich and powerful but bound by law in a functional society.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - danaris 11mo ago
    > Who benefits? In addition to what the other replies are saying (I think they're all at least partly right), Trump benefits. Right now. He's getting to be the King he always believed was his right and due.
- SlightlyLeftPad 11mo ago
  It’s a failed state and people need to get out.
rogerrogerr 11mo ago
I think if this was the plan, the right would be insisting on something more outlandish than a clean CR.
- SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
  > clean CR So dastardly that no one seems to be able to explain how dastardly it is.
  - paulryanrogers 11mo ago
    'Clean' CR after they already rammed through their whole agenda in a huge bill that threatened worse cuts if the government shutdown. Yet it seems they cut with or without a shutdown. Republicans have proven they won't follow the same rules and aren't negotiating in good faith. They'll do whatever they can get away with, and if bad things happen (whether they are opposed or not) then it's anyone else's fault.
    - SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
      Rammed through, is an interesting way to write that they had the votes and passed HR1. When Democrats had the Admin, Senate, and House, they put the ACA provisions on sunsetting subsidies in. How dastardly are the Republicans that they forced Democrats to do that when it was done with almost zero Republican votes? Your post is just game. “My side is good and their side is evil”… don’t you get tired of that?
      - svnt 11mo ago
        “We passed clean government funding that cost 20 million people their health care coverage.” You are falling for semantics games.
        SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
        It’s the CR that Dems passed last year. Stop. You aren’t even falling for it. They’re using shutdown as leverage to try and get something they couldn’t get when they had all three houses. You can agree or disagree that is a good idea or that it will work, but can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.
coliveira 11mo ago
That's exactly the plan. Not only this, but Republicans don't want to have congress working again. So their king will operate with zero oversight.
- spwa4 11mo ago
  The first comment that factored in that Trump literally announced the closure of the government before democrats even realized what was going to happen.
billy99k 11mo ago
[flagged]
- 0xbadcafebee 11mo ago
  Are they all of a sudden powerless? "Oh noes! we control the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government, but those meany liberals won't let us balance the budget" ?
- paulryanrogers 11mo ago
  They control all three branches of government. How is it anyone else's fault?
  - billy99k 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - paulryanrogers 11mo ago
      Republicans could revert the cuts to Medicaid or end the filibuster. They hold all the cards.
    - myvoiceismypass 11mo ago
      If republicans wanted to negotiate, why did Mike Johnson send everyone home? Why has a newly elected democrat been waiting over a fucking month to get sworn into the house?
- ipython 11mo ago
  https://youtu.be/_QL7G9_GPaE?t=410 https://youtu.be/_QL7G9_GPaE?t=410
- whycome 11mo ago
  I’m not American. Help me understand?
  - deleted 11mo ago
pfooti 11mo ago
Yeah, I think the actual underpinning support that broke this time is recission. In the past, of congress passed a budget with money for the some department or line item, that money would be spent. Now the president has claimed that he doesn't have to spend money he had been directed to spend by finding bills, and (importantly) the supreme court has upheld this stance. This means that there is no longer the ability to negotiate a budget in good faith. The Dems can fight for more health care funding (or whatever) and the compromise can happen, and then the president can just say "sike!" And not do it. And, political leanings aside, this president has shown that he will indeed break any agreement he decides to, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to negotiate. So I'm thinking this shutdown lasts a Long time.
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  Yeah, that seems like a pretty major problem. It isn’t even clear really how negotiations should start, without any ability to make binding deals.
  - mindslight 11mo ago
    Impeachment. Negotiations should start with impeachment. The President is not faithfully executing the laws passed by Congress, and the Supplicating Council has decreed that the only remedy is impeachment. It's time to impeach and convict.
    - collingreen 11mo ago
      The third time will totally be different guys!
      - mindslight 11mo ago
        It's one of the very few remaining in-system ways for the Constitutional US Government to continue existing. So yes, I would say it's worth banging that drum again. Maybe Susan Collins has even learned a lesson of her own.
macinjosh 11mo ago
[flagged]
- altcognito 11mo ago
  The last funding approved was passed through reconciliation with zero democrats. There is no “voting for funding they supported in the past” that spending plan is gone
- ipython 11mo ago
  I would say that at the time of the election, the idea of funding ICE at the level of the third largest military in the world would be considered a conspiracy theory. The democrats won't do that because that would lose them the only leverage they have in a government where republicans hold majorities in all three branches.
- jmtulloss 11mo ago
  And the republicans could just vote to change the rules of the senate. The out of power party gets a little veto power here. The republicans know the day will come they want that, so they won’t change the rules even though they have the power to do so (theoretically… there are republicans that will never compromise on this). Unfortunately they can’t get on the same page with their lame duck leader
- Buttons840 11mo ago
  Sometimes I do think the Democrats should just let Republicans ruin themselves on this issue. Make a fuss, make it clear you're worried about increasing health costs and are trying to stop it, but eventually, you might just have to let people experience the consequences of the party they elected.
  - macinjosh 11mo ago
    The Democrats care about healthcare costs increasing like remember when Obama caved on the public option because he sold out to the insurance companies?
colechristensen 11mo ago
>Someone tell me why this couldn't happen. Beware the ides of march. During a constitutional crisis that doesn't seem to have an immediate resolution political violence should be expected from the inside as an attempt to reach a resolution. The last line of defense is that military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution and soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command. nobody can gain loyalty anywhere near trump nor does anyone have close to the unhinged charisma but the government is shut down there should be no expectation that there will be any agreement to half fund it and absent that there's not really any foreseeable mechanism for the treasury to start operating on a large scale entirely outside of the law so i guess the other last line of defense is the bond market and foreign exchange markets which wouldn't respond well to dictatorial control of the treasury and the fed
- thephyber 11mo ago
  It’s hard to foresee how close to accurate your forecast is. But we are in a de facto junta if the military refuses to take orders from a president, at least for the duration of the presidency. It’s pretty hard to run a free and fair election under those conditions (we dealt with that in The South in the early Reconstruction years).
  - jgil 11mo ago
    The First Reconstruction was a very different civ-mil scenario. The military protected freedmen from the various insurgent and paramilitary groups that sought to deprive freedmen of rights.
  - colechristensen 11mo ago
    To be more clear than my vague references, 60 to 70 senators cornered Caesar and stabbed him to death to protect the republic. They killed him but didn't succeed in protecting the republic. An extended shutdown, an actually refusing-to-function House of Representatives, and a president with not even the slightest respect for the Constitution... the comparisons to first century BCE Rome exaggerated or metaphorical. Trump got someone to donate $130 million as an obvious symbol to try to buy military loyalty by paying salaries (nevermind it's about enough to cover a single nice lunch)
bee_rider 11mo ago
Maybe if the shutdown goes to the midterm, we’ll send representatives who’ll lower federal taxes to a pittance. Then Trump can try his experiment of running the government on tariffs instead (good luck) and we all get to hope our states can fill the gap.
- cosmicgadget 11mo ago
  I think ATCs will have resigned en masse long before then.
jfengel 11mo ago
There is only limited legal ability to fund departments outside of an appropriations law. Republicans could pass one if they eliminated the filibuster, but that's a nuclear option they haven't leaned on yet. The executive branch is applying various tricks to keep some absolutely critical departments going but they can't just fund anything they like. At least, not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval. But we'll see how much of a difference that makes.
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  > not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval. Trump has already shown his willingness to flout that. If he does it again, who's going to stop him? Congress?
lynndotpy 11mo ago
There is no reason it could not happen, our country (the United States) has rapidly and radically changed in the past 10 months and 10 days. The only longer shutdown was in 2018-2019 during Trump's first term, and this shutdown is looking to blow past that milestone. I'm happy these posts aren't getting flagged any longer, though. For the centrality of the United States in the tech industry (and vice versa), US politics are unfortunately also the most relevant story in the tech industry for any time horizon of a month or longer. Even Trump's "Long Live the King" announcement from near the start of his term was not taken seriously. It was quickly flagged here. It sucks, but Trump is just the biggest tech story of the day every day, by virtue of being the latent factor. There is no reason that can't happen. But consider also what it will mean if the government does re-open. I think it's much more likely than not that it reopens under Republican terms. It sounds dramatic but it is worth describing plainly: This administration is destructive, and it has already been the end of many things as we know it.
- HaZeust 11mo ago
  HN admins have some of the most influential in this administration on speed dial, the flagging and non-reversal of flagging was not due to ignorance.
thephyber 11mo ago
I suspect this shutdown will last a while, but I don’t think Republicans will have enough votes to open anything without Democrat buy-in. R needs 20% of the Ds to vote for R bills to get anything budget-changing passed (except the 1 Reconciliation per year that only requires a simple majority). Short of Dems feeling some insane pressure (eg. Military threats or somehow defunding of core government tasks like police, education, medical, Social Security), I don’t see that happening right now.
- ipython 11mo ago
  My point is that they won’t feel the need to ever “officially” re open the government.
- ssl-3 11mo ago
  I've mentioned it elsewhere, but: Republicans have enough votes to get moving on whatever they choose (including stopgap measures) regardless of what a minority of democrats may think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option > The nuclear option can be invoked by a senator raising a point of order that contravenes a standing rule. The presiding officer would then overrule the point of order based on Senate rules and precedents; this ruling would then be appealed and overturned by a simple majority vote (or a tie vote), establishing a new precedent. The nuclear option is made possible by the principle in Senate procedure that appeals from rulings of the chair on points of order relating to nondebatable questions are themselves nondebatable. The nuclear option is most often discussed in connection with the filibuster. Since cloture is a nondebatable question, an appeal in relation to cloture is decided without debate. This obviates the usual requirement for a two-thirds majority to invoke cloture on a resolution amending the Standing Rules.
  - thephyber 11mo ago
    It looks like they are already talking about it again in the news.
  - jrs235 11mo ago
    The Republicans don't want to get rid of the filibuster because they're scared of setting the precedent, they're scared because if they continue to pass bills with zero Democrat votes then they have to own full responsibility for what happens. Recession/depression is quickly approaching...
Figs 11mo ago
If this continues for much longer, local/state governments can, should, and eventually will commandeer the taxes that currently go to the federal government. There is no point in paying federal tax if the federal government is no longer functional. States are already trying to step up with emergency declarations to enable financial support to work around SNAP being unfunded; passing state laws to redirect useless federal taxes to fund state food programs in order to prevent the alternative of immediate violent revolution as millions of people go hungry is an obvious course of action when they exhaust that capacity...
- svnt 11mo ago
  And this will work much better in most blue states than most red states, which are more dependent on federal funds. Which means the likely response is the federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs in select states.
  - danaris 11mo ago
    I'm sorry, can you clarify that last part? The federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs...?
    - svnt 11mo ago
      I am saying one likely outcome is a federal government that explicitly and openly funds social programs that were formerly available to everyone only in states where it has a political majority. They will begin because they have presently stopped, and because it places additional taxation burden on blue states if they first allow the states to try to pick up their own slack, because generally only the blue states (Texas being the major possible exception) will be able to do so. This results in the federal government taking care of their base and their opposition subsidizing this support for their base.
      - danaris 11mo ago
        Gotcha, thank you; that's much clearer!
keysersoze33 11mo ago
(we need to talk about your TPS reports)
0xbadcafebee 11mo ago
It won't happen that way because in a couple of years they will give Trump unlimited power the same way they did Hitler in the 1930s. From democracy to dictatorship in less than a decade.
sleight42 11mo ago
Because at some point the Executive Branch has no more budget left to spend because Congress can't approve a budget?

by ipython 11mo ago

ares623 11mo ago

Speed running to become an actual developing nation. This is what millions of migrants are trying to escape from. Ironic, for all parties involved (well, except for the ones on top of course)

donmcronald 11mo ago
> Speed running to become an actual developing nation. That's what it looks like from the outside, but I can't understand what the gain is. Who benefits? The result of the middle class was massive advancement and an equally massive increase in standard of living for the wealthy who captured most of the gains. What do they gain from stagnating innovation and a lack of education, services, etc.? It makes me think of the old Olympic and sports videos. The participants basically suck because they're coming from a small pool of people wealthy enough to not need a job. Do they really want the pool of candidates competing to become doctors, etc. to be smaller which will end up lowering the overall quality for them? Or do they think they'll simply hire the best and brightest from other countries that are investing in their citizens?
- bryant 11mo ago
  "better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" is the expression and idea you're looking for. Alternatively "better to rule among the miserable than to serve among the great." It's a consistent theme with most autocracies.
- estimator7292 11mo ago
  Short term profit extraction for the already obscenely-wealthy. That's it, that's the only goal.
- lamontcg 11mo ago
  The ridiculously wealthy view the system as a strictly zero-sum game, and they want to keep everything they have, and deny the rest of the population of everything. They understand this isn't sustainable, so they're fortifying bunkers and buying up islands. The days of Henry Ford capitalists who think their workers should be paid enough to buy their products seems to be unfashionable (even though he was a Nazi supporting racist, he had his head screwed on better than they do). The end game of full on narcissistic capitalism is coming. Hopefully the Henry Ford types wake the fuck up and do something about their peers losing the fucking plot entirely.
- vkou 11mo ago
  > Who benefits? People who would rather be kings of shit mountain, than rich and powerful but bound by law in a functional society.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- danaris 11mo ago
  > Who benefits? In addition to what the other replies are saying (I think they're all at least partly right), Trump benefits. Right now. He's getting to be the King he always believed was his right and due.
SlightlyLeftPad 11mo ago
It’s a failed state and people need to get out.

rogerrogerr 11mo ago

I think if this was the plan, the right would be insisting on something more outlandish than a clean CR.

SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
> clean CR So dastardly that no one seems to be able to explain how dastardly it is.
- paulryanrogers 11mo ago
  'Clean' CR after they already rammed through their whole agenda in a huge bill that threatened worse cuts if the government shutdown. Yet it seems they cut with or without a shutdown. Republicans have proven they won't follow the same rules and aren't negotiating in good faith. They'll do whatever they can get away with, and if bad things happen (whether they are opposed or not) then it's anyone else's fault.
  - SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
    Rammed through, is an interesting way to write that they had the votes and passed HR1. When Democrats had the Admin, Senate, and House, they put the ACA provisions on sunsetting subsidies in. How dastardly are the Republicans that they forced Democrats to do that when it was done with almost zero Republican votes? Your post is just game. “My side is good and their side is evil”… don’t you get tired of that?
    - svnt 11mo ago
      “We passed clean government funding that cost 20 million people their health care coverage.” You are falling for semantics games.
      - SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
        It’s the CR that Dems passed last year. Stop. You aren’t even falling for it. They’re using shutdown as leverage to try and get something they couldn’t get when they had all three houses. You can agree or disagree that is a good idea or that it will work, but can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.

coliveira 11mo ago

That's exactly the plan. Not only this, but Republicans don't want to have congress working again. So their king will operate with zero oversight.

spwa4 11mo ago
The first comment that factored in that Trump literally announced the closure of the government before democrats even realized what was going to happen.

billy99k 11mo ago

[flagged]

0xbadcafebee 11mo ago
Are they all of a sudden powerless? "Oh noes! we control the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government, but those meany liberals won't let us balance the budget" ?
paulryanrogers 11mo ago
They control all three branches of government. How is it anyone else's fault?
- billy99k 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - paulryanrogers 11mo ago
    Republicans could revert the cuts to Medicaid or end the filibuster. They hold all the cards.
  - myvoiceismypass 11mo ago
    If republicans wanted to negotiate, why did Mike Johnson send everyone home? Why has a newly elected democrat been waiting over a fucking month to get sworn into the house?
ipython 11mo ago
https://youtu.be/_QL7G9_GPaE?t=410 https://youtu.be/_QL7G9_GPaE?t=410
whycome 11mo ago
I’m not American. Help me understand?
- deleted 11mo ago

pfooti 11mo ago

Yeah, I think the actual underpinning support that broke this time is recission. In the past, of congress passed a budget with money for the some department or line item, that money would be spent. Now the president has claimed that he doesn't have to spend money he had been directed to spend by finding bills, and (importantly) the supreme court has upheld this stance. This means that there is no longer the ability to negotiate a budget in good faith. The Dems can fight for more health care funding (or whatever) and the compromise can happen, and then the president can just say "sike!" And not do it. And, political leanings aside, this president has shown that he will indeed break any agreement he decides to, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to negotiate. So I'm thinking this shutdown lasts a Long time.

bee_rider 11mo ago
Yeah, that seems like a pretty major problem. It isn’t even clear really how negotiations should start, without any ability to make binding deals.
- mindslight 11mo ago
  Impeachment. Negotiations should start with impeachment. The President is not faithfully executing the laws passed by Congress, and the Supplicating Council has decreed that the only remedy is impeachment. It's time to impeach and convict.
  - collingreen 11mo ago
    The third time will totally be different guys!
    - mindslight 11mo ago
      It's one of the very few remaining in-system ways for the Constitutional US Government to continue existing. So yes, I would say it's worth banging that drum again. Maybe Susan Collins has even learned a lesson of her own.

macinjosh 11mo ago

[flagged]

altcognito 11mo ago
The last funding approved was passed through reconciliation with zero democrats. There is no “voting for funding they supported in the past” that spending plan is gone
ipython 11mo ago
I would say that at the time of the election, the idea of funding ICE at the level of the third largest military in the world would be considered a conspiracy theory. The democrats won't do that because that would lose them the only leverage they have in a government where republicans hold majorities in all three branches.
jmtulloss 11mo ago
And the republicans could just vote to change the rules of the senate. The out of power party gets a little veto power here. The republicans know the day will come they want that, so they won’t change the rules even though they have the power to do so (theoretically… there are republicans that will never compromise on this). Unfortunately they can’t get on the same page with their lame duck leader
Buttons840 11mo ago
Sometimes I do think the Democrats should just let Republicans ruin themselves on this issue. Make a fuss, make it clear you're worried about increasing health costs and are trying to stop it, but eventually, you might just have to let people experience the consequences of the party they elected.
- macinjosh 11mo ago
  The Democrats care about healthcare costs increasing like remember when Obama caved on the public option because he sold out to the insurance companies?

colechristensen 11mo ago

>Someone tell me why this couldn't happen. Beware the ides of march. During a constitutional crisis that doesn't seem to have an immediate resolution political violence should be expected from the inside as an attempt to reach a resolution. The last line of defense is that military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution and soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command. nobody can gain loyalty anywhere near trump nor does anyone have close to the unhinged charisma but the government is shut down there should be no expectation that there will be any agreement to half fund it and absent that there's not really any foreseeable mechanism for the treasury to start operating on a large scale entirely outside of the law so i guess the other last line of defense is the bond market and foreign exchange markets which wouldn't respond well to dictatorial control of the treasury and the fed

thephyber 11mo ago
It’s hard to foresee how close to accurate your forecast is. But we are in a de facto junta if the military refuses to take orders from a president, at least for the duration of the presidency. It’s pretty hard to run a free and fair election under those conditions (we dealt with that in The South in the early Reconstruction years).
- jgil 11mo ago
  The First Reconstruction was a very different civ-mil scenario. The military protected freedmen from the various insurgent and paramilitary groups that sought to deprive freedmen of rights.
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  To be more clear than my vague references, 60 to 70 senators cornered Caesar and stabbed him to death to protect the republic. They killed him but didn't succeed in protecting the republic. An extended shutdown, an actually refusing-to-function House of Representatives, and a president with not even the slightest respect for the Constitution... the comparisons to first century BCE Rome exaggerated or metaphorical. Trump got someone to donate $130 million as an obvious symbol to try to buy military loyalty by paying salaries (nevermind it's about enough to cover a single nice lunch)

bee_rider 11mo ago

Maybe if the shutdown goes to the midterm, we’ll send representatives who’ll lower federal taxes to a pittance. Then Trump can try his experiment of running the government on tariffs instead (good luck) and we all get to hope our states can fill the gap.

cosmicgadget 11mo ago
I think ATCs will have resigned en masse long before then.

jfengel 11mo ago

There is only limited legal ability to fund departments outside of an appropriations law. Republicans could pass one if they eliminated the filibuster, but that's a nuclear option they haven't leaned on yet. The executive branch is applying various tricks to keep some absolutely critical departments going but they can't just fund anything they like. At least, not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval. But we'll see how much of a difference that makes.

insane_dreamer 11mo ago
> not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval. Trump has already shown his willingness to flout that. If he does it again, who's going to stop him? Congress?

lynndotpy 11mo ago

There is no reason it could not happen, our country (the United States) has rapidly and radically changed in the past 10 months and 10 days. The only longer shutdown was in 2018-2019 during Trump's first term, and this shutdown is looking to blow past that milestone. I'm happy these posts aren't getting flagged any longer, though. For the centrality of the United States in the tech industry (and vice versa), US politics are unfortunately also the most relevant story in the tech industry for any time horizon of a month or longer. Even Trump's "Long Live the King" announcement from near the start of his term was not taken seriously. It was quickly flagged here. It sucks, but Trump is just the biggest tech story of the day every day, by virtue of being the latent factor. There is no reason that can't happen. But consider also what it will mean if the government does re-open. I think it's much more likely than not that it reopens under Republican terms. It sounds dramatic but it is worth describing plainly: This administration is destructive, and it has already been the end of many things as we know it.

HaZeust 11mo ago
HN admins have some of the most influential in this administration on speed dial, the flagging and non-reversal of flagging was not due to ignorance.

thephyber 11mo ago

I suspect this shutdown will last a while, but I don’t think Republicans will have enough votes to open anything without Democrat buy-in. R needs 20% of the Ds to vote for R bills to get anything budget-changing passed (except the 1 Reconciliation per year that only requires a simple majority). Short of Dems feeling some insane pressure (eg. Military threats or somehow defunding of core government tasks like police, education, medical, Social Security), I don’t see that happening right now.

ipython 11mo ago
My point is that they won’t feel the need to ever “officially” re open the government.
ssl-3 11mo ago
I've mentioned it elsewhere, but: Republicans have enough votes to get moving on whatever they choose (including stopgap measures) regardless of what a minority of democrats may think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option > The nuclear option can be invoked by a senator raising a point of order that contravenes a standing rule. The presiding officer would then overrule the point of order based on Senate rules and precedents; this ruling would then be appealed and overturned by a simple majority vote (or a tie vote), establishing a new precedent. The nuclear option is made possible by the principle in Senate procedure that appeals from rulings of the chair on points of order relating to nondebatable questions are themselves nondebatable. The nuclear option is most often discussed in connection with the filibuster. Since cloture is a nondebatable question, an appeal in relation to cloture is decided without debate. This obviates the usual requirement for a two-thirds majority to invoke cloture on a resolution amending the Standing Rules.
- thephyber 11mo ago
  It looks like they are already talking about it again in the news.
- jrs235 11mo ago
  The Republicans don't want to get rid of the filibuster because they're scared of setting the precedent, they're scared because if they continue to pass bills with zero Democrat votes then they have to own full responsibility for what happens. Recession/depression is quickly approaching...

Figs 11mo ago

If this continues for much longer, local/state governments can, should, and eventually will commandeer the taxes that currently go to the federal government. There is no point in paying federal tax if the federal government is no longer functional. States are already trying to step up with emergency declarations to enable financial support to work around SNAP being unfunded; passing state laws to redirect useless federal taxes to fund state food programs in order to prevent the alternative of immediate violent revolution as millions of people go hungry is an obvious course of action when they exhaust that capacity...

svnt 11mo ago
And this will work much better in most blue states than most red states, which are more dependent on federal funds. Which means the likely response is the federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs in select states.
- danaris 11mo ago
  I'm sorry, can you clarify that last part? The federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs...?
  - svnt 11mo ago
    I am saying one likely outcome is a federal government that explicitly and openly funds social programs that were formerly available to everyone only in states where it has a political majority. They will begin because they have presently stopped, and because it places additional taxation burden on blue states if they first allow the states to try to pick up their own slack, because generally only the blue states (Texas being the major possible exception) will be able to do so. This results in the federal government taking care of their base and their opposition subsidizing this support for their base.
    - danaris 11mo ago
      Gotcha, thank you; that's much clearer!

keysersoze33 11mo ago

(we need to talk about your TPS reports)

0xbadcafebee 11mo ago

It won't happen that way because in a couple of years they will give Trump unlimited power the same way they did Hitler in the 1930s. From democracy to dictatorship in less than a decade.

sleight42 11mo ago

Because at some point the Executive Branch has no more budget left to spend because Congress can't approve a budget?