Economy Shutdown near-miss illustrates Washington erectile dysfunction

[LeonardoBjj]

By David Morgan
October 1, 20237:02 AM GMT-3

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. narrowly dodged its fourth partial government shutdown in a decade on Sunday, but the past week exposed the depths of political dysfunction in Washington and particularly within the splintered House Republican caucus.

A last-minute decision by Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy to turn to Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill pushed the risk of shutdown to mid-November, meaning the federal government's more than 4 million workers can count on continued paychecks for now.

But the mere fact the government came within hours of shutting down - with former President Donald Trump cheering on the idea and just four months after the nation almost defaulted on its $31.4 trillion in debt - raises concerns about Congress' ability to function.

"Congress is not looking very good," said Sarah Binder, an expert on governance issues at the Brookings Institution think tank. "Arguably, the one thing it has to do every year is pass laws that fund the government, and their inability to do any of them this year is just a ringing indictment."

The near-shutdown is only the latest example of congressional malfunction.

Hardline conservatives have held up Senate action on hundreds of military promotions over abortion, shuttered the House floor for a week in June and subjected McCarthy to 15 humiliating floor votes before allowing his election in January. They may yet oust him for having compromised with Democrats.

And of course, less than three years have passed since Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to overturn his election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump is the clear favorite for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024.

Biden: - If you dont vote for me. You arent Lego

A push to impeach Biden, led by Trump's allies, has also fanned partisan anger and split the House majority with an inquiry that even some Republicans say has failed to produce tangible evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden.

'NO WAY TO GOVERN'

The partisan divisions between House and Senate make the 118th Congress unlikely to match the policy achievements of the last Congress, when Democratic majorities in both chambers enacted bipartisan bills on infrastructure, U.S. technology and other issues.

Brinkmanship and polarization have already spread beyond politics to threaten the U.S. financial outlook. The credit rating agency Moody's warned last week that a shutdown would harm its "Aaa" rating for the United States - the country's last top rating.

"Hurtling from one fiscal cliff to the next is no way to govern. We never should have been in this position to begin with," Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer said.

The House and Senate have been on divergent paths on funding since McCarthy agreed to set fiscal 2024 spending at $1.59 trillion four months ago.

'DYSFUNCTION CAUCUS'

House Republicans dissolved into infighting over hardliner demands for $120 billion in cuts.

"The dysfunction caucus at work," Republican Representative Don Bacon told reporters earlier this month, after hardliners blocked consideration of a defense appropriations bill that finally passed on Thursday.

Some moderate Republicans have likened that party infighting to TV soap operas, including the one-time U.S. series "All My Children."

"The government is not a telenovela," Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz of Texas said on Friday, expressing her frustration over Biden border policies and opposition to a failed Republican stopgap bill that included border restrictions.

Before Saturday, bitter political relations between parties, and within the Republican Party in particular, boiled over into ad hominem attacks, some directed at hardline Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, a prominent holdout on bipartisan funding who has threatened to move for McCarthy's ouster.

"He's not a conservative Republican. He's a charlatan," Representative Mike Lawler, a centrist Republican from New York, said of Gaetz after the failed Republican stopgap vote.

Gaetz responded in a podcast appearance: "I'll get my blanket and curl up in a corner and call my therapist and see how to work through all the hurt feelings."

Some House Republicans worry about personal rivalries and a general lack of trust within a 221-212 majority that can afford to lose no more than four Republican votes on legislation opposed by Democrats.

"That's the part that nobody wants to talk about. There are a lot of personalities at play here, and multiple strategic objectives," Republican Representative Kat Cammack told reporters.

Only one in three respondents to an August Reuters/Ipsos poll said they had a favorable view of the House or the Senate.

Of the majority leaders, McCarthy scored an approval rating of just 21% while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer - the top Democrat in Congress - had a 26% approval rating.

Those ratings were well below the 40% of respondents in September who said they held a favorable view of either Biden or Trump.

Trump: Nobody knows more about this than me!

Democrats view McCarthy as having wasted time presiding over chaos.

"The majority has demonstrated overwhelmingly, in the last several days and the last several months, an unwillingness to govern, an inability to govern, and chaos - general chaos," said Representative Rosa DeLauro, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

But many House Republicans directed their ire at the small group of hardliners that had opposed their own failed stopgap measure and its winning bipartisan successor, while complaining about the slow pace of progress on appropriations.

"There's this sort of strange woulda-coulda-shoulda -- appropriations should have just moved faster," said Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw.

Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Jason Lange and Moria Warburton in Washington and by Carolina Mandl in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...llustrates-washington-dysfunction-2023-10-01/

 

[Andy Capp]

 

[A Very Serious Cat]

I don't pay much attention to these debt limits things but are they happening more frequently or is it just me?

 

[Fox by the Sea]

these always look like distractions to me.
UNLESS WE PUT X AND Y IN THE BILL WE RISK CATASTROPHE!!!!

doesn't that sound very manipulative?

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Good for the Speaker. Probably cost him his job though. I feel he realized that the country is bigger than party and individual.

 

[Scerpi]

Why our policticians shouldn’t be 75+

Because they’re not going to be around when this mountain of debt collapses the economy

The only question is when and how much

 

[AWilder]

Is that why they sell dick pills on all the right wing radio shows?

 

[Fluffernutter]

Is that why they sell dick pills on all the right wing radio shows?

Viagra is owned by Pfizer.

You think Pfizer limits itself to right wing media?

 

[MicroBrew]

I was expecting a lego rendition of erectile dysfunction. I am disappoint.

 

[Fluffernutter]

Either vote on each issue in a separate bill or give the president the authority of the line item veto.

 

[Thrawn33]

Viagra is owned by Pfizer.

You think Pfizer limits itself to right wing media?

Just caught the "yearly COVID shot" ad watching football...

 

[lsa]

I was expecting a lego rendition of erectile dysfunction. I am disappoint.

I wanna know just how big @LeonardoBjj LEGO pic folder is. Also I wonder what his wife/girlfriend thinks when she checks is computer and finds a folder with a ton of LEGO pix...

 

[LangfordBarrow]

Why our policticians shouldn’t be 75+

Because they’re not going to be around when this mountain of debt collapses the economy

The only question is when and how much

It looks like some want it to be today. The US can carry debt without collapsing the system. If we stop paying our debts because of hardliners then the system will collapse. It might make the Democrat President look bad but at what cost to the country so Republican hardliners can campaign as fiscally conservative?

 

[idrankyourbeer]

‘Let’s have that fight’: McCarthy and Gaetz go to war over shutdown deal

Far-right congressman says he will move to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker over deal to avert shutdown to ‘rip the Bandaid off’

Simmering hostility between Republicans over the bipartisan deal that averted a government shutdown descended into open political warfare on Sunday, a rightwing congressman saying he would move to oust Kevin McCarthy and the embattled House speaker insisting he would survive.

“We need to rip off the Bandaid. We need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” the Florida representative Matt Gaetz told CNN’s State of the Union, saying he would file a “motion to vacate” in the next few days.

McCarthy, Gaetz said, lied about “a secret deal” struck with Democrats to later pass money for Ukraine that was left out of the compromise agreement, and misled Republicans about working with the opposition at all.

The bill keeping the government funded for 47 days passed the House on Saturday night 335-91, 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in support. It cleared the Senate 88-9 and was signed by Joe Biden.

In remarks at the White House on Sunday, Biden said the measure extending funding until 17 November, and including $16bn in disaster aid, prevented “a needless crisis”.

But, Biden said: “The truth is we shouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s time to end governing by crisis and keep your word when you give it in the Congress. I fully expect the speaker to keep his commitment to secure the passage of support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression.”

Asked if he expected McCarthy to stand up to extremists, Biden replied: “I hope this experience for the speaker has been one of personal revelation.”

McCarthy hit back at Gaetz, branding him a showman “more interested in securing TV interviews” than keeping government functioning.

“I’ll survive,” McCarthy told CBS’s Face the Nation. “You know, this is personal with Matt. He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid.

“… So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get it over with it, and let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us into shutdown and I made sure the government didn’t shut down, then let’s have that fight.”

Gaetz said he would no longer hold to an agreement made in January to support McCarthy in exchange for concessions including a hard position on federal funding. That deal included a loosening of rules to allow a single member to file a motion to vacate, the beginning of the process to remove a speaker.

“The only way Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House at the end of this coming week is if Democrats bail him out, and they probably will,” said Gaetz.

“I’m done owning Kevin McCarthy. We made a deal in January to allow him to assume the speakership and I’m not owning him any more because he doesn’t tell the truth. And so if Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy by bailing him out I can’t stop them. But then he’ll be their speaker, not mine.”

McCarthy would need 218 votes to keep his job. Some senior Democrats said they would not vote to save him and would back the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, instead.

“Kevin McCarthy is very weak speaker,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told CNN, saying she would support Gaetz’s motion.

McCarthy “has clearly has lost control of his caucus. He has brought the US and millions of Americans to the brink, waiting until the final hour to keep the government open and even then only issuing a 4[7]-day extension. We’re going to be right back in this place in November.”

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Jeffries said the deal represented a “total surrender by rightwing extremists”.

Republicans loyal to McCarthy also attacked Gaetz and the rightwing House Freedom Caucus for their “destructive” pledge to oust the speaker.

“What I just heard was a diatribe of delusional thinking,” Mike Lawler of New York told ABC’s This Week. “They are the reason we had to work together with House Democrats. That is not the fault of Kevin McCarthy, that’s the fault of Matt Gaetz. He’s mealy mouthed and, frankly, duplicitous.”

Relations between the speaker and Gaetz reached a new low with a testy confrontation in a meeting on Thursday. Gaetz accused McCarthy of orchestrating a social media campaign against him, the speaker saying he did not rate the congressman highly enough to do so.

On Sunday, Gaetz insisted “this is about keeping Kevin McCarthy to his word, it’s not about any personal animosity”.

Gaetz claimed McCarthy reached a “secret deal”, promising to introduce a standalone bill to continue funding Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russian invaders.

A growing number of Republicans object to the US helping pay for the war. Gaetz said: “However you think about [Ukraine funding], it should be subject to open review [and] analysis, and not backroom deals, so I have to file a motion to vacate against speaker McCarthy this week.”

On ABC, Gaetz said he did not expect to have enough votes to remove McCarthy immediately, “but I might have them before the 15th ballot”, an allusion to the time it took to elect the speaker in January.

“I am relentless, and I will continue to pursue this objective,” Gaetz said. “And if all the American people see is that it is a uni-party that governs them, always the Biden, McCarthy, Jeffries government that makes dispositive decisions on spending, then I am seeding the fields of future primary contests to get better Republicans in Washington.”

Shalanda Young, Biden’s budget director, blamed Republicans for bringing the government to the verge of a shutdown, and urged Congress to take a longer-term view.

“We need to start today to make sure that we do not have this brinkmanship, last-minute anxiousness of the American people,” she told ABC. “Let’s do our jobs to not have this happen again. Let’s have full-year funding bills at the end of these 47 days.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...tz-kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-shutdown-deal

looks like the maga trash are mad about their party being dysfunctional and unfit to govern and once again having to turn to the democrats just to help them clean up their mess. now that one maga slut who likes to be groped and feel others up around children inside of a public theater , and that other fine heap of maga trash from florida who is the only person in congress to have asked for a pardon for sex trafficking are gonna file to remove kevin mccarthy from speakership, and it looks like the democrats are gonna go along with it just for shits and giggles and to try to get hakeem jeffries in.

i wonder how many vote sessions it will take this time for these chucklefucks just to find a leader within their own party?

 

[mixmastermo]

By David Morgan
October 1, 20237:02 AM GMT-3

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. narrowly dodged its fourth partial government shutdown in a decade on Sunday, but the past week exposed the depths of political dysfunction in Washington and particularly within the splintered House Republican caucus.

A last-minute decision by Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy to turn to Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill pushed the risk of shutdown to mid-November, meaning the federal government's more than 4 million workers can count on continued paychecks for now.

But the mere fact the government came within hours of shutting down - with former President Donald Trump cheering on the idea and just four months after the nation almost defaulted on its $31.4 trillion in debt - raises concerns about Congress' ability to function.

"Congress is not looking very good," said Sarah Binder, an expert on governance issues at the Brookings Institution think tank. "Arguably, the one thing it has to do every year is pass laws that fund the government, and their inability to do any of them this year is just a ringing indictment."

The near-shutdown is only the latest example of congressional malfunction.

Hardline conservatives have held up Senate action on hundreds of military promotions over abortion, shuttered the House floor for a week in June and subjected McCarthy to 15 humiliating floor votes before allowing his election in January. They may yet oust him for having compromised with Democrats.

And of course, less than three years have passed since Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to overturn his election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump is the clear favorite for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024.

Biden: - If you dont vote for me. You arent Lego

A push to impeach Biden, led by Trump's allies, has also fanned partisan anger and split the House majority with an inquiry that even some Republicans say has failed to produce tangible evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden.

'NO WAY TO GOVERN'

The partisan divisions between House and Senate make the 118th Congress unlikely to match the policy achievements of the last Congress, when Democratic majorities in both chambers enacted bipartisan bills on infrastructure, U.S. technology and other issues.

Brinkmanship and polarization have already spread beyond politics to threaten the U.S. financial outlook. The credit rating agency Moody's warned last week that a shutdown would harm its "Aaa" rating for the United States - the country's last top rating.

"Hurtling from one fiscal cliff to the next is no way to govern. We never should have been in this position to begin with," Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer said.

The House and Senate have been on divergent paths on funding since McCarthy agreed to set fiscal 2024 spending at $1.59 trillion four months ago.

'DYSFUNCTION CAUCUS'

House Republicans dissolved into infighting over hardliner demands for $120 billion in cuts.

"The dysfunction caucus at work," Republican Representative Don Bacon told reporters earlier this month, after hardliners blocked consideration of a defense appropriations bill that finally passed on Thursday.

Some moderate Republicans have likened that party infighting to TV soap operas, including the one-time U.S. series "All My Children."

"The government is not a telenovela," Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz of Texas said on Friday, expressing her frustration over Biden border policies and opposition to a failed Republican stopgap bill that included border restrictions.

Before Saturday, bitter political relations between parties, and within the Republican Party in particular, boiled over into ad hominem attacks, some directed at hardline Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, a prominent holdout on bipartisan funding who has threatened to move for McCarthy's ouster.

"He's not a conservative Republican. He's a charlatan," Representative Mike Lawler, a centrist Republican from New York, said of Gaetz after the failed Republican stopgap vote.

Gaetz responded in a podcast appearance: "I'll get my blanket and curl up in a corner and call my therapist and see how to work through all the hurt feelings."

Some House Republicans worry about personal rivalries and a general lack of trust within a 221-212 majority that can afford to lose no more than four Republican votes on legislation opposed by Democrats.

"That's the part that nobody wants to talk about. There are a lot of personalities at play here, and multiple strategic objectives," Republican Representative Kat Cammack told reporters.

Only one in three respondents to an August Reuters/Ipsos poll said they had a favorable view of the House or the Senate.

Of the majority leaders, McCarthy scored an approval rating of just 21% while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer - the top Democrat in Congress - had a 26% approval rating.

Those ratings were well below the 40% of respondents in September who said they held a favorable view of either Biden or Trump.

Trump: Nobody knows more about this than me!

Democrats view McCarthy as having wasted time presiding over chaos.

"The majority has demonstrated overwhelmingly, in the last several days and the last several months, an unwillingness to govern, an inability to govern, and chaos - general chaos," said Representative Rosa DeLauro, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

But many House Republicans directed their ire at the small group of hardliners that had opposed their own failed stopgap measure and its winning bipartisan successor, while complaining about the slow pace of progress on appropriations.

"There's this sort of strange woulda-coulda-shoulda -- appropriations should have just moved faster," said Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw.

Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Jason Lange and Moria Warburton in Washington and by Carolina Mandl in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...llustrates-washington-dysfunction-2023-10-01/

Do you prepare the legos for each of these threads you create?

 

[mixmastermo]

Good for the Speaker. Probably cost him his job though. I feel he realized that the country is bigger than party and individual.

It's not like he was really able to do his job to begin with- he made major concessions to become speaker and his hands are essentially always tied.

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/30/1202713718/kevin-mccarthy-motion-to-vacate-gaetz-house-speaker

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz has been threatening for weeks to start the procedural motions to try to remove Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. A day after McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to keep the government funded for at least 45 days, Gaetz said he's not backing down from the threat.

"I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy," Gaetz said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. "Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy."

 

[BFoe]

Good for the Speaker. Probably cost him his job though. I feel he realized that the country is bigger than party and individual.

According to FOX, some House Republicans are looking to expel Matt Gaetz lmao.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ho...-renewed-threat-vacate-house-speaker-mccarthy

 

[Sinister]

So to recap:

- Far right Magatards in Congress endlessly grandstand about how liberal leftism is ruining America.

- Majority of House GOP presents arguably the most conservative budget it possibly could that wouldnt be used as toilet paper by the Senate.

- far right Magatards proceed to vote WITH the liberal left to kill that bill (lolz!)

- McCarthy and PizzaGaetz call for each other's heads. McCarthy being the craven coward he is tuns to liberal left for help.

- Wayward pirate Capt. Crenshaw predicts a more liberal bill will pass, because the far right killed their own extremely conservative bill and now McCarthy goes into debt to the liberal left.

- Far more liberal bill with NO provisions the far right Magatards demand in it passes for a temporary budget.

Ladies and gentlemen, American fascism at work. Like I said in that other thread I'm glad they're so comically incompetent. This is like National Lampoon's Washington Vacation

 

[avenue94]

Good for the Speaker. Probably cost him his job though. I feel he realized that the country is bigger than party and individual.

I assure you he didn't do it for country. He did it because he's hoping he can hang on to the speakership and a majority.

 

[ShadowRun]

According to FOX, some House Republicans are looking to expel Matt Gaetz lmao.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ho...-renewed-threat-vacate-house-speaker-mccarthy

I wouldn't mind he's an idiot and take MTG with him .