It's their fucking budget.

[bigtree]

Last edited Thu Oct 23, 2025, 10:18 AM - Edit history (1)

...I know we care about govt services & workers, but I'd bet republicans will start caring about their stalled budget before Democrats become beside themselves over re-opening a government completely under the thumb of Donald Trump.

The most relevant and important issue before us is the republican budget which contains devastating cuts to health care and other social obligations; a partisan endeavor that is entirely their party's own creation and ambition.

Democrats have no interest in speeding their destructive package of nebulous cuts to vital benefits to the White House for Donald Trump's signature; no interest in hurrying along republicans' continued and enhanced tax giveaways to theirs and their rich friends' bank accounts.

I understand the responsible stance of our party remaining in town ready to negotiate while republicans duck in and out, but that Kabuki dance of concern is much more in earnest among republicans than in our party, as Democrats aren't actually in control of any of this process that we don't enable, and unable as we also are to legislate a successful conclusion to this impasse on our own initiative.

If you look a little closer at the players, avoiding the deliberately clouded lens the media is offering us to equalize concern between parties, they've advantaged republicans with a veneer of victimization, despite their complete control of all branches of government including the Supreme Court; unwittingly advantaging Democrats by supposing they hold something more in their hand than their very potent, and increasingly successful bluff.

Republicans have effectively stalled their own budget. They have no way of advancing it unless they change the filibuster rules and put future budgets on partisan fast tracks for Democratic majorities. They and their president keep reminding us how cruel they can be, and how willing they are to kill the hostages and shoot their way out, but there's very little on the other side of that promised melee that they haven't already massacred and buried.

If they're going to shoot up the rest of the place, they'd better get to it, but with very few but their own sweet selves left standing in the halls of government, they'll need to be especially careful of ricochets and friendly fire.

It won't be long before the republicans who go to work each day to accomplish something or the other, remind themselves that their solid majority in every branch is more than just a political feint for Donald's Trump's self-interested political theater.

If and when they're ready to enact their budget, republicans come to Democrats to negotiate a way forward. Or, they'll just settle into a pantomime of governing without any pretense that they care about the country beyond their own interests, no more than Trump.

[pat_k]

1. After trumpublicans passed the MAGA Murder Budget and horrific rescission (reengaging on the CR deal) package...

.. I wish we had heard a whole lot more of the Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate pointing out that this is not how things are done.

Sure, the Republicans managed to pass their deeply, deeply unpopular reconciliation bill, but they CANNOT IMPLEMENT IT WITHOUT DEMOCRATS. The "blueprint" they passed is effectively meaningless until it is implemented in a budget resolution that funds the government for the upcoming year. And to be voted on, that resolution will need 60 votes -- i.e., they must have Democrats on board.

I wish that, from the get go, they had been hammering on the fact that this big "win" for trump -- forcing through his bill by the deadline he set -- was a completely hollow "victory." They won nothing. It cannot be put into effect without Democratic votes on 9/30.

I wish they had, from the get go, pointed out that there is a REASON the majority party negotiates with the minority party on reconciliation bills. They negotiate because they must. They need the minority party on board to IMPLEMENT reconciliation provisions.

By bowing down to trump, they won nothing. They implemented nothing. And they will not be able to implement the budget without Democrats.

Perhaps I'm flat wrong, but I think if this had been the drumbeat from the day that horrific bill was passed, we would have gone into this fight -- our electeds refusal to be accomplices in the horrific budget, all of it -- in a better position.

So far, I think that everyday that the shutdown continues Republicans are ceding ground to the Democrats. But I think we could have come into this thing far stronger if messaging about their failure to negotiate on reconciliation had been front and center from the day the MAGA Murder Budget passed.

Yes, I realize the "ins and outs" are more complicated than the messaging I propose, but we need to get better at stating simple truths, Too often our leaders get lost in the trees when they need to just be pointing out a few basic realities.

[bigtree]

2. I agree that we should keep the focus on the budget

...right now, we've effectively slowed it to the point where the American people can see and feel the cuts to their basic needs as they're struggling to make ends meet.

I'm thinking that our Dems have done this just right. Republicans are stalling their own budget thinking Democrats care about making their trains run on time. Of course I sit through more of their content than most folks.

I don't actually believe it's a salient message for a party to point to the majority so much that it makes them look feckless. Someone remarked to me that they thought it was absurd that Democrats were declaring they will do this or that without the actual authority to do anything except object. and I replied that it's actually the essence of political change that politicians aspire to a place beyond where they're stuck in the mud.

Nonethe less, republicans are finding out that they have the most interest as a majority in keeping government running, and that they actually can't do it alone with a government so closely divided between parties; no matter what the idiot that's egging them on to this says.