We’ve known all year that government funding would run out on September 30th, and yet—even as recesses (long and short) came and went—spending bills weren’t being aggressively moved and scheduled for votes on the floor of either chamber of Congress until the last few weeks. Even then, Congress continued to recess every weekend.
I dislike the "BothSides" approach here. The problem isn't "Congress," the problem is the Republican-controlled House which has spent all of its free time holding hearings that go nowhere.
We could have easily had this debate months ago, but the Law Firm (currently organized as “Schumer, McConnell, McCarthy and Jeffries”) has long preferred to wait until the last minute to make an aggressive push to pass spending bills. When we approach the end of September (or any other spending deadline), The Firm then insists on writing its own legislation in secret, often revealing it to members of Congress for the first time only 48 hours before a long-scheduled shutdown window.
I really don't think this is accurate. Republicans are in favor of less government spending and more tax breaks for the wealthy. Democrats are in favor of spending government money in order to solve problems. Not the same, even if results are similar. Who is responsible for delays this year? Yeah, let's look at the people who did fruitless investigations instead of their jobs!
This pattern has repeated itself over and over again. It always ends the same way—avoiding a shutdown, but producing deficits in the trillions of dollars, and empowering The Firm each time it happens. This, in short, is perhaps the single biggest reason why we’re $33 trillion in debt. It has also effectively excluded most members of Congress, along with the Americans who elected them, from arguably the single most important thing Congress does each year.
Actually, in 2009-2010, the whole government, from the House to the Senate, to the presidency, was putting in long hours and lots of effort to pass the ACA/Obamacare. Why did Democrats feel the need to do that? Because there was a necessity to handle medical expenses for the regular citizen. There had been a need to do so since Harry Truman was the President, but the expense of health care was reaching crisis proportions under Clinton and was absolutely intolerable under the younger George Bush. Why couldn't Bush handle the problem? Republicans demonstrated during the first two years of Trump (2017-2018) that they simply didn't have any sort of practical answer as to how to handle health care without the government spending a lot of money. Private enterprise was useless.
I’ve long said that this ugly cycle will keep repeating itself “until it no longer works” for The Firm—that is, until members stop reflexively voting for such bills, under duress and mild protest.
As I point out above, "cycles" have nothing to do with anything.
This could be the year when “it no longer works.” Enough members of Congress are fed up, along with those who elected them, with a corrupt system that empowers the few at the expense of the many.
Being "fed up," is fine, but Republicans simply don't have practical answers. My recommendation is to throw out useless hearings and focus on how government can actually save money. We can also establish how much more the wealthy can pay in taxes.
If a shutdown results from this year’s iteration of The Firm’s manipulative scheme, there will be many who will blame those who are speaking out against it. If you’re one of those people, please stop and ask yourself: “could I be blaming the wrong people?”
Well, yes! "those who are speaking out against it" simply don't have practical answers. All they have is the vague desire to "do something."
To his credit, Speaker McCarthy has promised House Republicans that he won’t subject them to any omnibus spending package, much less the kind of rushed, abusive omnibus that The Firm has long been known to force through Congress.
Passing a whole series of smaller bills WOULD have been a great idea, had the process started several months ago!
But promises to avoid an omnibus aren’t enough—especially if they aren’t backed up by scheduling decisions that back up the Speaker’s long-asserted desire to have a “regular order” spending process, whereby each of the twelve spending bills (organized by government function) are considered individually.
Again, a dozen separate spending bills are a great idea, but where was the Republican House for the last nine months? Holding hearings to try and bust President Biden!
3:44 PM (Link to original piece) Sep 26, 2023
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