Let's talk about Johnson and Trump tanking a Monday end to the shutdown.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Johnson and Trump tanking a Monday end of the shutdown.

After the Senate moved forward on a package that would fund most of the government through September and fund DHS for a couple of weeks to provide negotiation time. All signs pointed to a quick end to the government shutdown over the weekend. But that was before the dynamic duo of deficits, debt, dysfunction, and delay talked to each other. Then Johnson said, "I'm confident that we'll do it at least by Tuesday."

Johnson said he isn't even going to bring it up for a vote today, something he could do through a process known as suspension of the rules. Trump and Johnson are trying to pretend like this is the Democratic Party's fault for demanding ICE be reformed.

The problem with that is twofold. First, politically, reforming ICE is polling well. Blame the Democrats for doing that thing Americans really want to happen isn't quite the gotcha they think it is. But the second part might be the more important part. This isn't a vote on Democratic Party attempts to reform ICE. This is just a vote on keeping things open.

It certainly appears like the Republican party is once again banking on the American people being too ignorant to understand what's being voted on. If they're telling you this is a vote to reform ICE, they're laughing at you and making fun of how easy it is to trick you. The funny part of this is that the Democrats, who are the most hardline on reforming ICE, aren't even voting in favor of the package because they said no more funding until it's reformed.

Republicans voting against the package to try to salvage a talking point might actually end up blocking more ICE funding.

Here's the other thing. They're going to try to fearmonger about all kinds of things, but this government shutdown wouldn't actually stop ICE operations. So all the fear-mongering about immigrants is going to be a lie, and they're going to be laughing at you for believing it.

Under DHS shutdown plans, ICE is exempted and ICE has a giant slush fund it can use to keep operations going for some time. Many on the Republican side of the aisle don't want to negotiate on ICE’s tactics at all. While some want to open the bill back up to add their own pet amendments on unrelated topics.

The short version here is that something that was relatively straightforward, a simple funding package to provide time for negotiations, is being derailed by people who are trying to use the bill designed to provide time to negotiate, to play games for clicks on social media.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.