It’s what we might call an “impasse.” The House keeps attaching a one-year delay in the Affordable Care Act, plus a lot of other random stuff, to the continuing resolution to keep the government funded a couple more months. The Senate keeps saying no deal; they aren’t agreeing to the delay. The President says he will veto a cr that contains a delay. I don’t think anyone is going to blink.
I get the impression that the House baggers sincerely believe the Senate will cave and are genuinely baffled why they haven’t already.
John Dickerson writes at Slate,
With less than two days until the government runs out of money, the clock is ticking and no one is negotiating. House Republicans voted Saturday on a new set of amendments it would like to tie to continued funding of the government, and Senate Democrats promptly said, “Nuts to you!†They’re going to vote to table the amendments on Monday, which will kick the issue back to the House.
Depending on when the bill returns, Republicans may try one more gambit to chip away at Obamacare, but time is growing short—the deadline is Monday at midnight. That means the decision whether to keep the government open will fall squarely on House Speaker John Boehner. He has two options: He can allow a vote on the Senate bill that passed (with Democratic votes) on Friday to fund the government until Nov. 15 or permit the shutdown to go forward, as a way to pressure the White House and satisfy his most conservative members.
C’mon, Boehner, for once in your sorry-ass life, be a mensch. Fall on your bleeping sword and put the Senate bill up for a vote.
Boehner and other House Republicans are pissed that the Senate didn’t meet today.
Speaker of the House John Boehner accused Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats of “breathtaking arrogance†for intentionally not convening a Sunday session to deal with compromise legislation to stop a government shutdown.
“The House worked late into the night Saturday to prevent a government shutdown, and the Senate now must move quickly, today, to do the same,†Boehner said Sunday.
Which of course is crap, because the Senate has made its final offer. The House can either take it or leave it. It’s that simple. Whether the Senate met today or not doesn’t change anything.
Part of the reason the Nutjobs are surprised the Dems haven’t caved yet is that we have idiocy like quotes in the NYT saying that “Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in that chamber, said he would be willing to consider the medical devices tax,” right after the Nutjobs put that in their latest ransom demand.
But even a simpering quisling like Durbin has gotten to the point where he immediately followed with “but not with a gun to my head, not with the prospect of shutting down the government.â€
The sad truth is that previous extortion maneuvers by the Nutjobs and GOP leadership have gotten rewarded, so they believe it is a tactic that works. As Paul Ryan said the other day, no one on his side believes the shutdown will happen. And Senators like Durbin are so habituated to their hostage status that they reflexively capitulate, only now they catch themselves doing it and pull up short.
Which, in my mind, is why we need the shutdown. It’s time to stop rewarding these tantrums. If I were Obama, I’d be proposing something that would actually increase the pain on the GOP every day during the shutdown. Increased levels of EPA fines, or cutting highway planning in GOP districts or something.
Sometimes it’s not enough to withhold the dog biscuit. Sometimes you need to whap the dog on the nose with a newspaper.
Finally a blogger on the left admits the truth, it’s the Democrats in the Senate that are holding the country hostage unless they get their way.
“it’s the Democrats in the Senate that are holding the country hostage unless they get their way.”
Exhibit A: why you can’t reason with a wingnut.
Durbin sounds like he’s got Stockholm syndrome.
If I were Obama, I’d be proposing something that would actually increase the pain on the GOP every day during the shutdown.
I like the way you think…
Suppose Obama was to say…
” I refuse to sign a simple CR to keep the government running. Before I will pay Seniors citizens or the military, the GOP must agree to tax increases, a steep inheritance tax on estates over 1 million dollars and and end to corporate welfare. These changes will balance the budget and end the need for future debt ceiling increases. It’s your grandmother and thousands of others who will starve if you don’t agree to my demands.”
Would the GOP call that negotiating?
They put a conscience clause in this spending bill. The clause affects women (natch) and their ability to get contraceptives. I think someone should take names; and, despite that it is said that many of these guys are in districts they can’t lose, they should be challenged at their next election within an inch of their Congressional lives. Make them justify their existence. By putting the conscience clause in the bill shows that they are NOT serious about getting a bill passed. These guys are perhaps the most worthless waste space I have ever seen. And, every minute they serve in Congress, they are stealing the taxpayers’ money by collecting their very undeserved salary. And, to all the taxpayers who voted these idiots in office, you should be ashamed of the part you are playing in the destruction of your own country and the future of your children.
It’s hard to imagine that someone’s reading comprehension skills are so bad that they came away with the impression you were blaming the Senate Democrats. I almost thought it was a joke, until I saw an unusual name on the comment.
More and more, I find myself reaching for a line from Abraham Lincoln’s address at Cooper Union in New York, describing the ‘negotiating” position of the slaveholder states:
The Senate bill returned to the House should be a CR, no additions, for 13 months (until after the 2014 election).
Period. No negotiation, no talking.
I like biggerbox’s idea: have Obama just make each department with the authority self-sustaining until the GOP backs down: enforce all the fines against corporations that the government hasn’t bothered to collect, with appropriate threats to throw the CEOs in jail until paid.
Never happen, but one can dream.
Yeah, dipsh*t, maha’s blaming the Democrats.
OY!
This imbecile is why Ted Cruz read “Green Eggs and Ham,” even though neither he, nor anyone in his boy-toy fan-club, understood what the point of the f*cking story was
Exhibit A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F-U!
V-Z.
Gulag — It’s as bad as this comment, in which some rightie thought I had expressed an approval of organized crime. The rightie rank-and-file have the reading comprehension skills of turnips, with critical thinking skills to match. And their newspaper pundits write column after column of florid prose that make no sense, but since righties can’t read, it doesn’t matter.
I’ll take any turnip, over a Conservative.
I can eat a turnip.
Our Conservative vermin are full of other vermin, and need to be boiled for hours before they’d be considered even remotely edible.
It’s a shame you can’t put people who make such blatantly ridiculous comments in timeout – it’s clear they want attention, and they should learn the lesson they didn’t learn as children.