McConnell blocks House bill to reopen government for second time
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Thursday, July 27, 2023 00:53
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https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/425414-mcconnell-blocks-house-bill
-to-reopen-government-for-second-time
Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed package to reopen the federal government for a second time in as many weeks on Tuesday.
Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Ben Cardin (Md.) asked for consent to take up a package of bills that would reopen the federal government.
One bill would fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, while the other would fund the rest of the impacted departments and agencies through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Under Senate rules, any senator can ask for consent to vote on or pass a bill, but any senator can object. McConnell blocked the two bills, saying the Senate wouldn't "participate in something that doesn't lead to an outcome."
McConnell for weeks has said he would not bring legislation to the floor on the shutdown unless there was a deal between President Trump and Democrats on border security, the issue that has triggered the shutdown. McConnell has described other votes as "show votes."
"The solution to this is a negotiation between the one person in the country who can sign something into law, the president of the United States, and our Democratic colleagues," McConnell said Tuesday.
Roughly a quarter of the government has been shut down since Dec. 22 over an entrenched fight on funding for Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The Senate passed a stopgap bill late last year by a voice vote, but it was rejected by the White House because it didn’t include extra border money.
Trump is demanding more than $5 billion for his signature wall. Democratic leadership has pointed to $1.3 billion as their cap and argued that it must go to fencing.
House Democrats passed their package to fully reopen the government earlier this month and have begun passing individual appropriations bills as they try to ratchet up pressure on Republicans to break with the president and support the legislation. But those bills are expected to go nowhere in the GOP-led Senate.
McConnell sought to drive a wedge between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democrats earlier Tuesday, characterizing the newly minted House leader as making border security “take a back seat to the political whims of the far left.”
“Here in the Senate my Democratic colleagues have an important choice to make. They could stand with common sense border experts, with federal workers and with their own past voting records, by the way, or they could continue to remain passive spectators complaining from the sidelines, as the Speaker refuses to negotiate with the White House,” McConnell said from the Senate floor.
Talks between Trump and congressional leadership are at a standstill after the president walked out of a White House meeting last week when Pelosi told him that Democrats would not consider border wall funding even if he fully reopened the government.
Democrats are trying to build pressure on McConnell to break with Trump and move legislation, something Senate GOP leadership say the careful Republican leader will not do.
Though several senators are publicly picking their own ideas, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Tuesday that hasn’t resulted in much pressure from within the caucus for McConnell to change his strategy.
“Our members are, you know, they’re going to make their positions known, nobody will be shy about that,” Thune told reporters. “But in the end, having a vote in the Senate I think has to be on something that not only can pass here but that can be signed into law by the president.”
But Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged McConnell to get involved in the talks on Tuesday, touting his previous role as a deal-maker who could resolve sticky political stalemates.
“There's only one person who can help America break through this gridlock: Leader McConnell. For the past month Leader McConnell has been content to
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Sad G, very sad. We should start calling this McConnells' shut down.
T 
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“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.”
A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitle
r-history-historian
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McConnell is obviously Russian.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Sounds like a good idea. McConnell's Shutdown....well, he owns it now.
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Sad G, very sad. We should start calling this McConnells' shut down.
T
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Meanwhile, I've seen on social media that people are looking to place blame on Congress and insist that they NOT receive their pay while the Shutdown is on.
One problem, that pesky Constitution.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/heres-how-much-members-of-congr
ess-get-paid-even-during-a-government-shutdown/ar-BBShI2p?ocid=spartandhp
Quote:
"Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution allows the lawmakers to still get paid their salaries, despite the federal government being shut down due to their inability to reach an agreement."
And, as I have said in the past, you can't pick and choose which of the Articles in the Constitution should be adhered to. The entire document is of great importance.
So, what to do, what to do!?
SGG
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Quote:Do other developed countries have government shutdowns?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
McConnell is obviously Russian.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Government shutdowns are uniquely American. When the government shuts down in other developed countries like Australia, politicians such as McConnell are the ones who feel the brunt of a shutdown. For instance, the Australian parliament risks being dissolved if government isn’t funded, which, in theory, makes it less likely to happen.
“We cannot find another democracy that shuts itself down,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters this week. Referencing parliament dissolving itself in Australia, Hoyer quipped that it “would not be a bad alternative” [for McConnell to dissolve.]
Other developed nations also have a lower threshold for passing budgets — a budget typically needs a simple majority rather than the higher percentage required in the US Senate. Simple 50% majorities help prevent this kind of gridlock.
Before 1976 the government never shut down. Since then it has shut down 21 times because that year the "modern" budgeting process for the federal government went into effect. Government agencies operated on a shoestring budget during shutdowns but didn’t actually cease to function until after 1980, when then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued legal opinions finding that in order for the federal government to not violate the 1884 Antideficiency Act, agencies truly had to shut down.
www.economist.com/united-states/2019/01/10/before-1980-the-federal-gov
ernment-did-not-shut-down
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Before 1980, huh?
It's most definitely the Russians. They've been implementing this plan for 40 years now, right under our noses.
They're still shitty about that time that Kurt Russell's US Hockey team kicked their ass.
You guys are awesome. You're like Blues Clues and Scooby Doo combined.
Our country owes you a great debt for connecting the dots for us.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I'll connect the dots for you: 6ixStringJack, don’t think of yourself as not a Republican just because you once had a problem with Bush. Bush was a nincompoop; even Republicans had a problem with him. 6ix, you fit perfectly into the rightward shift of conservatives. You are a Republican, despite you believing that you are in a special category, a very unique individual. You are not.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Before 1980, huh?
It's most definitely the Russians. They've been implementing this plan for 40 years now, right under our noses.
They're still shitty about that time that Kurt Russell's US Hockey team kicked their ass.
You guys are awesome. You're like Blues Clues and Scooby Doo combined.
Our country owes you a great debt for connecting the dots for us.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I've seen that exact same graph that shows the exact same thing happening with the Democrats.
Your graph is fake news, and you're full of shit if you're going to deny that the left has gone full retard.
JFK was nothing like Obama and Hillary.
Fucking neo-liberal swine. They're cut from exactly the same cloth as GWB was.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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