Will we ever see an American government that stops spending more than they take in?
Will we ever get a government that actually gets bills passed in a timely manner?
It is like politicians are the ones in school who constantly procrastinated and were always asking their professors for more time to complete their projects.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Irony of ironies? DNC Chair Ken Martin was just on a podcast where he said:
When we get into power next time, we damn well better make sure that D.C. is a state, that Puerto Rico is a state, that we eliminate the filibuster rule, right? We get rid of all these antiquated rules that sure in the past made sense, but right now, with what we're dealing with in this country, and we have a fascist regime, trying to destroy our democracy, we cannot abide by those rules anymore. We can't be the only party with one hand tied behind our back.
Is it possible for the Democrats to understand that the filibuster is what will allow them to shutter the government unless the Republicans cave to their demand to extend the grotesque and bloated (un)Affordable Care Act subsidies and that absent that filibuster ability the CR would have been passed already?
DC can't become a State, it is constitutionally defined as the "Seat of Government" and may not exceed "10 miles square". Anything outside of that zone is already part of a State and, again according to the Constitution (Article IV, Section 3), "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."
That would mean that not only would both houses of Congress need to approve, the legislatures in Virginia and Maryland would have to agree to lose the income and property tax revenue from those areas where the average income is over 2x the national average and the average cost of a home is somewhere in the $1 million dollar range. I suppose the Democrats could employ "eminent domain" and seize the land, but their whole argument is that it is the Republicans who are authoritarian and "fascist", so how would they avoid those labels themselves if they did that?
I do, however, agree that Puerto Rico should be offered the opportunity to hold a binding election on whether or not they wished to become the 51st State. The last 3 or 4 non-binding elections have all shown that this is the will of the majority of Puerto Ricans. This is one of the things that Congress should get done after the budget battle is over.
I have a question for all the “Trump s a king/czar/dictator, crowd… if that is true, how can a Democrat minority shut down the government? Would t a dictator just laugh and order the government to remain fully open and functional?
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
"Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this Earth." - Ronald Reagan, A Time for Choosing
So, we're in shutdown mode because the Democrats added a subsidy to a Covid spending bill that they set to expire in 2025 (without the help of a single Republican vote I might add), and now they want the temporary additional subsidy they created to become a permanent additional subsidy because the (un)Affordable Care Act is causing premiums to skyrocket, just as Republican predicted it would.
Am I missing something here? It's the Democrats who made it a temporary additional subsidy when they, themselves, could have made it a permanent additional subsidy without Republican help. And now that the Republicans, again, just like the last time, aren't going to help them add an additional subsidy to the already generous subsidies in place, the Democrats are going to shut the government down?
It's not as though the ridiculous amount of subsidies available are going to all disappear, the original subsidies are still in effect, are include in the CR passed by the House that the Democrats are rejecting. It's the additional subsidy the Democrats passed all by themselves that they are insisting upon now, the additional subsidies that they set to expire at the end of this year.
