Kevin McCarthy Kills Bipartisan Senate Bill to Avert Shutdown
Just four days out from a government shutdown, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has declared a bipartisan Senate stopgap measure dead on arrival.
Senators, having apparently lost faith in McCarthy’s ability to stave off a shutdown, negotiated a bill late Tuesday night that funds the government until Nov. 17 and includes $12 billion in aid and disaster relief for Ukraine. It’s expected to be voted on by the end of the week before being sent over to the House, and is intended to buy lawmakers more time to hash out a longer-term deal, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said.
But, according to Punchbowl News, McCarthy said in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday morning that he wouldn’t take up a bill that includes Ukraine funding but no border security measures. “I don’t see the support in the House,” he reportedly said.
Aid for Ukraine has been one of several sticking points for ultraconservative hardliners in the House who have repeatedly sabotaged McCarthy’s efforts to get spending bills passed.
"Government shutdowns" are, among other things, wage theft from government employees.
In the Gingrich shutdowns of the 1990s, even active-duty military members' pay was delayed without compensation for up to three weeks. Yes, that's right: the Republicans literally stole paychecks from our soldiers and sailors just to stick it to Bill Clinton. (And maybe to give a little handout to their buddies in the payday loan business.)
More recent shutdowns have spared active-duty DoD, but still perpetrated wage theft against members of the Coast Guard and other defense-critical services. That was the case in the 2018-2019 shutdown, for example.
You can't convince me you care about border security if you don't fucking pay the Coast Guard.
It also shuts down the WIC program, which helps ensure food security for 7,000,000 women and children.
Yeah, but who cares about them, we have to look all tough and whatnot with our talk of border walls and self-reliance and Galt Gulch fantasies.
Why waste money on the coast guard when we can build a perfect wall!
Has anyone not seen Pacific Rim...
I jest but I am one of the thousands of govt employees that will be furloughed if the govt shuts down.
I really hate to get into conspiracy theory territory but I think Jan 6 was a precedent setting situation to further the GOP agenda to make any kind of march because of this BS that is being pulled by certain politicians to try to remove them will be met with the whole see the other side is doing it and they are bad.
I really hope I am wrong and I am reading the situation wrong, but with the way things are going...who the fuck knows.
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.
The Military doesn't uniformly vote right- it's just the senior/ranking/whiter folks that tend to do that. The noncoms (who tend to be young, brown) tend to vote in line with their civilian cohorts.
In other words, the military are politically representative of/in line with their civilian peers, politically
Who are disproportionately poor and POC (especially women) while also being very young. I don't think you realize how much these people are sociopathically targeted by scumbag military recruiters.
Gonna need a source that says that an overwhelming majority of service members vote R.
Obviously some of them do, but an overwhelming majority?
I've heard it's at best 50/50, while a lot of officers are Dems.
Because when Republicans are in power, military make more. Ask any active military member, and they'll tell you they always make more money when a Republican President is in power.
Why other federal workers? I know several who vote red, too. In fact, the majority I know do, which boggles my mind. It's especially funny to see my old squaddies who stayed in for the retirement and want to complain about socialism.
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".
This stupid fuck. All he has to do is negotiate with the Democrats. His speakership is over regardless. He must know that. The only point in what he's doing now is cruelty. People will starve and he's fine with it. He wants it.
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
The classic Futurama bit.
Everyone is a temporarily embarrassed
millionairebillionaire.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.
He doesn't need their votes. He needs the Democrats and a handful of Republicans.
True, except the Freedom Caucus is threatening to hold a vote to remove him as Speaker if he dares do anything they don't like.
McCarthy wants to keep his power position (even though, as it's currently set up, he doesn't really have much power) more than he wants to help this country. If helping the country would result in some minor harm to the level of power he has, he'll let America burn.
He's lost his speakership no matter what at this point.
He's still delusional enough to think that he'll cling onto it using some brilliant maneuver. Were McCarthy an extremely skilled politician, I might think that was possible, but McCarthy is far from extremely skilled. Very, very far from it.
He’s going to be removed anyway. He’s chicken shit.
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.
I know I'm in the minority in this, but you know the most fucked up thing?
This impasse won't end because of the pressure of federal workers suffering.
This impasse will end because our credit rating effects the profitability of our capitalist owners, whose sociopathic greed infecting our society is the reason we have sociopathic politicians like McCarthy in the first place.
Because here in the US, sociopathy is encouraged, even mandated in business by shareholders, hurt whatever peasants you want if it makes you an extra nickel, just not the owners. That was Bernie Madoff's mistake.
Edited for spelling
Never forget that asshole corps like Toyota went back to funding GOP members despite the fact they tried to end our Democracy.
Toyota: "Threat to our democracy? That's a next month problem. We've got a stock that needs a 0.1% boost!"
Toyota: "Threat to our democracy? No, threat to your democracy. We're just here to sell cars."
It's not surprising - a captive market can be great for business when one is in good relations with those making the rules.
On a side note, is there an easy list of these orgs and their contributions?
McCarthy isn't a sociopath. He's just Reek. bites sausage
Impasse*
Thank you for repairing that gap in my knowledge.
Excuse me, this is the Internet. You are supposed to either argue that you were right all along or berate the person correcting you.
affects*
Affects*
Exactly.
Remember: him and (especially) the far-right goons want a shutdown. They know Republicans will rightly be blamed in the short-term. But they're willing to accept that, and even worse: they're willing to damage the entire country and weaken our National Security to hurt the economy while Biden is president. That's all this is! Don't let anyone ever forget...
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.
I strongly believed for years that the benefit of a non-state-affiliated press was that it was free of state control, thus less likely to become propaganda outlets.
Don't worry, I realized the flaw in that logic over ten years ago.
Money. Money was the flaw.
Fuck capitalism.
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".
Preaching to the choir here...
You sound just like Reddit, where EVERYTHING and ANYTHING was the Republican's fault. Republicans want funds to go towards a border crisis that Democrats want to ignore. Democrats want to send BILLIONS to Ukraine, but literally turn a blind eye to what's happening in our own country. Ever since Biden took over, the Democrats have chosen to ignore what's been going on with our immigration issues, literally, they don't want to talk about it or do anything because they don't want to give even the slightest indication that Trump and Republicans have been right all along about having border issues. If we can send billions to another country, we sure as hell can send money to help with our borders.
Living on the border a stones throw from Mexico myself... what border crisis? Care to articulate and provide some citations to back it up?
Dude, Google is your friend...I'm in San Diego...if you don't think this is a big deal to us, you're kidding yourself...unless you live here, you have no idea how crazy this is...
https://www.kusi.com/mexico-agrees-to-begin-deporting-migrants-as-crisis-worsens-along-the-border/
Not everything is the Republican's fault. Sometimes the Democrats go along with stupid Republican ideas. There is a crisis at the border, but Republicans are offering solutions that will be far less effective at addressing the issue than what Progressives want. There is some blame on the Democrats for not explaining what would solve the crisis, but the Republican solutions aren't going to address the problem effectively, and lead to a ton of death and suffering.
You say that, and there's no denying there are border related problems, but if you think the solution lies within the party that supports someone who thinks a mote filled with hungry alligators is a viable one you might want to rethink a thing or two.
Just a humble suggestion.
Then bring it up for a vote and let it be defeated, you nincompoop.
This lying wimp knows it would pass, and would rather cost the economy billions than risk looking like he's not a big powerful strong man.
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 a shut down. Trump gets a shut down. 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
They're already starting. They're claiming that the reason that the government is going to shut down is because Biden refuses to negotiate.
Of course, the problem here is that 1) Biden DID negotiate back in June/July and got a deal which the House Republicans are breaking, 2) the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that Biden would sign, and 3) the debate is in the House right now. On the latter point, Biden has no place in the House. He could negotiate behind the scenes or make public comments, but it's not his job to go onto the House floor and try to get votes for a bill.
Blaming Biden for the House being unable to pass a bill is like blaming your doctor for your car problems.
You're exactly right...
but
That's not gonna mean a thing to the already irrational Trump voters...
but
If these house morons used their heads, they'd realize they've already got those votes in the bag, and all these stunts are doing is weakening their hold on more traditional and more centrist Republican voters. These voters might not flip, but they very well might just not vote for these representatives.
fixed it
I’m gonna go ahead and predict that by this time next week, he’s going to not be Speaker of the House anymore. Also, automatic ejection and disqualification from the speakership in the future should be an automatic mechanism that gets triggered when the house is unwilling to fund the government.
Send em all home and have new elections.
If this is an oblique “both sides are the same” comment… no, they’re not.
Not at all, but you couldn't just send home the shitty ones. Ideally, the ones that are causing the problems wouldn't be reelected, but unfortunately we all know that isn't how it works.
Right now I honestly worry that implementing your “replace them all” solution would lead to WORSE people being elected.
We don't really have to worry about it, because it won't happen in the foreseeable future. We spend too much on elections to suddenly reelect several hundred congress people.
Weakest American in history? Like literally, I'm thinking. I've never seen a man so sackless and small in my 40 plus years. Has anyone else?
Lindsay graham comes to mind.
Oooh, yeah. He's another too, but ol Kevin has been in Congress 16 years now, and he regularly gets shit on by people like Gaetz, who's a relative newcomer who clung to Trumps nuts to get into office.
Kevin should be eating Matt's lunch, not the other way around. Weakest bastard to ever hold the Speakership for sure.
The Treason Caucus is in complete control of McCarthy
There absolutely would be support from Democrats and moderate Republicans. But he refuses to work with Democrats.
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.
So I think I must've slept past part of highschool civics class. Why does the Speaker of the House get to unilaterally decide what bills the House will vote on? If this bill was unanimously supported by Democrats and a few Republicans, it would pass. So how does one man just decide not to vote on it and shut down the government?
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:
There's a process and it takes about 30 days to do that.
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.
Stupid is what stupid does
Can we get a class action lawsuit together?
I know the likelyhood of this occurring is low, but wasn’t one of the conditions of his speakership was that anyone in the house (or was it restricted to just republicans?) could recall him. If so, would it be possible for a republican to recall him, get a small handful of republicans to join the democrats to instate a new speaker and then vote on the bipartisan bill?
Aren't they just likely to install someone far crazier and from the Treason Caucus though?
Meant to say have the small number of republicans join with the democrats to vote in someone more sane. Edited my post to reflect that.
Moderate reps have made a couple of grumbling noises suggesting they might attempt to bypass him with the Dems on this but supposedly the specific process in question is VERY rarely invoked.
Qevin is just what Swalwell said he is. Shocking.
Can anyone tell me why the democratic minority whip can't find some common ground with moderate republicans in the house and pass this bill?
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.
The GOP is just lunatics all the way down.
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.
First you'd have to find moderate Republicans in the House, they're a very rare breed that are nearly extinct.
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.
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.
No, I didn't mean it that way, I was asking a question about something I didn't know about.
I'm in the minority here (as always) but Republicans are asking for more money to go towards our borders, while supporting the money going to Ukraine. Democrats do NOT want anything going to the borders, and are okay with everything going to Ukraine. It doesn't sound like the Republicans are asking for too much...it sounds like Democrats just don't want money for border security, because they simply refuse to believe there's any issues.
Does sound like you are in the minority here. Border security is a red herring.
What ultimately matters most are your priorities for immigration. Do you in any way want to limit legal immigration at the southern border? Do you want the immigrant population to grow more slowly, or are you ok with a high rate of immigration?
The fundamental reality is that many of the people who enter illegally have valid claims for entering, and under current rules and standards they should be allowed in. Many Republicans cheered on a measure to give asylum to people fleeing certain authoritarian countries like Cuba and Venezuela. The issue is that the legal channels are backed up due to underfunding, so many of those theoretically legal refugees enter illegally. When they enter illegally, they can't use the systems meant to ferry them to sanctuary cities, even ones far from the border.
The reason the processing system isn't properly funded is that Republicans want to limit both legal and illegal immigration from Latin America. They are actually the ones guilty for creating so much illegal immigration, and the crisis at the border. They want to only fund efforts to keep immigrants out, and refuse to fund efforts to let qualified refugees in. If you want the border situation addressed and don't care about limiting immigration for qualified refugees, conservatives are the ones to blame.