He expressed that a shutdown will favor Trump and Musk, so sounds reasonable?
Schumer said that a shutdown would enable Trump to arbitrarily shutter parts of the government he doesn’t like.
Trump is already shuttering the parts of the government he doesn’t like, and the “CR” gives those acts the veneer of lawfulness.
If there had been a shutdown there would likely have been more pain in more places. But the Dems could have plausibly negotiated for a better result than what Schumer voted for, and aside from the pain of the shutdown itself it’s not at all clear how the end result would be any worse than what we got
And despite what Fetterman and the other Senate Democrat collaborators might claim, a vote for cloture was a vote for the bill to become law. The rules of the Senate are dumb, but “this bill would not have passed save for that vote” is a pretty empirical rebuttal.
If a shutdown would favor trump and musk, than why were they celebrating his vote to keep the government open?
Because he’s lying. He just didn’t want to lose his staff and clubhouse access for however long it lasted.
Steelman’s Argument: why are they celebrating? Because that’s the ideal play for them to concentrate their power and capitalize on the situation.
They may privately have celebrated if the Dems shut down the government, but been publicly outraged so their base knows that it’s time for more hate.
Honestly the short-term anxiety in me is glad that Trump didn’t have to deal with a federal government where he could tell all the non-essential employees to go home and not come back, and have less resistance to plundering the USA.
The long term anxiety is like, is this like Chekoslovakia in 1938 or whenever and is fighting in the streets already a foregone conclusion?
And the short term anxiety is like fuck they’re going to use this post to find out I support opposing the government. Then the cynical part is like “they already know”. But then it’s like they might have the evidence, but they haven’t searched through it yet to identify all dissidents.
I wish I could think straight about all this in a way that led me to action rather than paralysis.
Because a shutdown of a fascist government is better than the fascist government being able to function.
I also understand it’s reasonable. But you have to remember this bill will hurt many people. The logic is that Dems should show opposition not complicity for those people to have a positive reason to vote for them in 2y, and maybe to reach a deal that prevents some harm. Otherwise people might not even know the bill happened, and what the consequences were, and why republicans suck. The other strategy though is to let Trump fuck everything up so bad over 4y people basically riot to oust him. In that scenario you don’t want to give him the chance to say any of the things he did wrong were your fault, which interference would cause. The problem is he will anyway, because he’s a pathological liar.
I believe the expression is “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Pretty much. And if you take this view, why not go down fighting? Dems really need the advertising. Schumer is basically rolling over for big donors, and unwittingly opening the door for more progressive politicians to take over the mindshare in the party more permanently.
Unlike in 2016, there definitely won’t be a moderate “Hillary bro” crowd in 2026. There will be the people who literally want to behead Trump in the White House lawn, and the AoC/Bernie party.
I disagree with that take.
Trump’s gutting of federal agencies has only highlighted all the things we take for granted and/or didn’t even know were benefiting us. With a shutdown, that all comes to a stop, and the workers who are deemed “essential” still have to work but don’t get paid. Remember the last shutdowns?
TSA workers still have to work unpaid. ICE isn’t going anywhere. Think they’re thugs now? Wait till they’re not getting a paycheck and taking their (extra) anger out on their victims.
And Musk/DOGE? With all but essential workers furloughed, I have no doubt the dismantling and fuckery will continue except now they’re basically running around with even less supervision than they have now.
Like it or not, Schumer made a hard, but likely correct, call to see the bigger picture.
The thing I remember is last time when Democrats were in power and Republicans caused a shutdown, it ended up making people more mad the the Republicans. And in the end they decided shutting down the government hurt them at the election. But it’s just my recollection, I’d be thrilled if I were wrong.
The budget is the death nail to those agencies so they are going away shut down or not.
But if we shutdown EVERYTHING we might be able to show how stupid that is and make it temporary or get some concessions.
I couldn’t find the specifics in a quick Google search, and since this is OOTL I guess I’ll ask here.
And I know I’m about to be shit on for even asking, genuinely, what are the parts of the bill that will hurt people?
All the articles I could find were just how trump would weaponize the shutdown, nothing I could find stated the specifics of the bill.
From what I’ve heard it’s just a complete funding cut to all the agencies he’s promised to “destroy”, whose firings have already affected lives like with USAID, the EPA, etc. Idk if there’s medical cuts in there, but there’s definitely cuts to research grants on medicine. And instead of using the savings to pay off the deficit, he’s using it to fund tax cuts to his billionaire friends.
I will never understand how Americans are dumb enough to believe you can cut taxes and pay off the deficit. It’s like if you had credit card debt then quit your job. Oh and in this case you don’t get to quit your job, it’s your neighbor in the mansion next door who probably got us into debt to begin with or owns the debt.
I will never understand how Americans are dumb enough to believe you can cut taxes and pay off the deficit.
If your cuts to programs are greater than the loss from cutting taxes it’s absolutely possible. That’s simple math. Not that I agree with trump obviously but your argument is flawed.
Well that’s what they say they are doing but it’s still not flawed. If I wanted to pay off my debt effectively and quickly I’d get a better job AND reduce my spending. So higher taxes (preferably on the rich) and reduce spending (preferably on non essentials like the military overspending)
All I’m saying is as my parents let’s say you would question my decisions if I did what you suggest, cut my hours but cut my spending MORE. That would be kinda sus.
That’s a much more logical approach, and I think the argument makes it pretty clear that fixing the deficit is not in Republican interests, it’s just lip service. Which is a big problem since the deficit could destroy the economy in the near future.
They have to worry that higher taxes will cause the economy to slow down. Some economists think this is bullshit, and it probably is. But the wealthy will definitely find tax havens and bring their money there, wherever it is in the world. Look at Switzerland.
The problem is that the economy slowing down is the consequence of their bad budgeting. We can’t get out of the deficit without consequences.
However, the American consumer ultimately is a market for things, so whether or not that market is expensive or cheap, it’s worth being in the market.
The USA also controls its currency and its border. We can tax in ways that no other country can. We can just say, no, you can’t take your USA currency to overseas banks as a us citizen. And if you sell it to buy gold or something, that’s capital gains.
Let’s do it.
Oh I agree. Also some of these programs are pretty important. And even the less important ones exist for a reason. I’m not necessarily against trimming the fat but it should be given more consideration than “CLOSE ALL THE THINGS!!”
Trump thanked Schumer for the vote, and so “shutdown was not the greater favour to agenda”
Unanimity over being a terrible bill, and one of the rare opportunities for democrats to ask for anything at all as ammendments, or simply offer a clean CR to force Republicans to take responsibility for shutdown with their “terrible/unacceptable conditions/amendments” insistence was a basic path.
Chuck Schumer as a zionist supremacist favorite of the DNC, now on a hasbara book tour, means that the opportunity for military to be paid during their assistance/extension of Israel genocide to Yemen helps their motivation to conduct it. DNC as an institution has zionist supremacism as its first mandate. Winning or resisting or Americans, if they don’t matter as much as that first mandate, don’t matter.
After reading this I still don’t know why everyone is criticizing Schumer.
Government shutdowns are bad. For everyone employed by the government, receiving government services, working with government agencies, or in case anything unexpected happens. Continuing as-is is easily preferable to not continuing.
I do wonder if a shutdown invokes some sort of procedural change leaving us open to even more shenanigans.
But really the only hint I see is the term “Clean CR”. By definition , you expect a Continuing Resolution to continue. Was this not clean? Were there changes embedded that we would object to? If so, I haven’t seen any detail on this
My, quite possibly naive, take is that i think people are mad because he flipped. He said that he absolutely wouldn’t vote for it and then flipped a day latter and said he would. This riled Dems up to fight and then immediately sent against what he had started. I also don’t think that he has explained himself as to why he changed his mind.
More than just flipping, flipping from right to wrong is the issue.
