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Another “government shutdown” looms if Democrats’ pet programs are not funded.

Posted by $ CBJ 6 years, 12 months ago to Politics
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“The fact that Republicans need Democrats to vote for a temporary spending measure to avoid a shutdown gives Democrats leverage to force the GOP to abandon plans to attack funding for environmental programs and Planned Parenthood.”

As I see it, Republicans have three alternatives:

1) “Compromise” with the Democrats, which will guarantee big government as usual for the foreseeable future, as the Democrats can employ the same tactics every time the debt ceiling is reached.

2) Dust off the “trillion dollar coin” strategy proposed about five years ago. It appears to be legal, it would not increase the national debt and it would not require additional interest payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillio...

3) Call their bluff. Trump would have lots of leeway on which government programs get funded and which do not. It would be great fun to see a massive reduction of funding for programs that benefit the Democrats’ core constituencies.

Option 3 would be preferable and option 2 would be an improvement on the current situation. Unfortunately, option 1 is the most likely.
SOURCE URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-have-a-new-and-surprising-weapon-on-capitol-hill-power/2017/04/01/e2ba46c0-16e3-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html


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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 6 years, 12 months ago
    Option 3 would be wonderful and make Obama look like the ass he is. When there was a "shutdown" under Obama's watch the government went to great lengths to make it as painful as possible closing parks that didn't need extra money to stay open, putting cones on the roadside 'closing' the view etc.

    If the Dems shut the government down, Trump can do what every business does when it is running short -- prioritize spending the revenue that is available. He might have to lay off areas he doesn't want anyway but you can bet he won't make a point of making it painful.
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 12 months ago
      I agree on Option 3. The Dems use this fear controller over and over again.
      It only serves to make the GOP look weak, cowardly and stupid as illustrated in what has to be my favorite editorial cartoon~
      http://comicallyincorrect.com/2014/12...
      Call the bluff. Tell the control freak fascist Dems to do their worst and to go to hell while they're at it. In the meantime, the GOP needs to make a loud noise about exactly what the Jackass Party is doing and why. Add that they care more about power than the American people.
      Will this happen? Me dino does not think so. It takes a spine to do such things and the mainstream GOP is a weaselly rat pack of gutless cowards. I'm beyond fed up with the curs.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 12 months ago
    Simple solution: No negotiations with terrorists.

    However, I agree with you CBJ, the con-gress is filled with gutless, statist looting eunuchs. The cowards will continue to waste the peoples' scarce resources until the country is as bankrupt as Bernie Madoff.
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  • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
    I think Trump would hesitate to use option 3, the government “shutdown”, because of the possibility he would receive most of the blame for any inconvenience and hardship it may cause. On the other hand, option 1 (the “compromise” option) would make him appear weak and would not go over well with most of his hard-core supporters. I think Trump might actually favor option 2, the “trillion dollar coin”, as it would solve the short-term budget crisis while neutralizing any leverage the Democrats might have for influencing Trump’s budget priorities.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 12 months ago
    It may well be that a government shut down turns out to be beneficial. After all, the example of a doctor's strike a number of years ago showed that the number of hospital deaths dropped significantly. Washington may not get anything done, but that will include not getting the bad and stupid things that Washington is prone to perform, not getting done as well.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 6 years, 12 months ago
    There's another option: another "nuclear" rule change that makes passage of spending bills by simple majority vote allowed. Some would object to changing the Senate into a near twin of the House, but radicalism has pretty much destroyed the elements of what was once the center of real debate and compromise into a platform for political posturing and little accomplishment.
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  • Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 12 months ago
    CBJ, I would say your analysis is correct, option 1 is most likely, given their performance to date and the Healthcare debacle as an example of their total inability to get behind an issue. Option 2 is just smoke and mirrors, almost as if they wrote a law to allow for smoke and mirrors, which begins to head down the road of a shadow government funding itself with fake money (or the idea that all money is fake to start with). Option 3 has no hope of happening, given the Dumbocraps apparent control of the media, total lack of knowledge and facts used by their supporters, and the sheer volume of crying and whining they generate. No one has the cuhones to tell them to STFU and go to your safe space.
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  • Posted by chad 6 years, 12 months ago
    A government shut down would be great. Turn off the spigot to unwanted bureaucracies, all of them. I like what a friend of mine suggested many years ago, turn off the air conditioning and heating, make it uncomfortable to work there. It should be a part time job working only a few months a year and mandatory to spend the rest of their time with their constituents with an office they have to man personally where people can talk with them directly. They should be working less than 30 hours a week so taxpayers don't have to pay for their healthcare. Let their healthcare costs go up ten times and their deductibles increase 70 times like mine did and pay for it with a minimum wage part time salary.
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  • Posted by scojohnson 6 years, 12 months ago
    Realistically, shutting down the government doesn't really mean much, especially if Trump skips the jackass Obama tactic of putting fences up around monuments and paying park rangers to stand there and tell people they can't look at the monument.

    Just shut it down if that is what it takes.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 6 years, 12 months ago
    As others have pointed out, a shutdown just plays right into Republicans' hands with a Republican President. And it will be hard for even the leftist media to spin this where the Democrats are the minority party.
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  • Posted by wiggys 6 years, 12 months ago
    I hope the government does shut down. That will mean they can't do anymore damage than has already been done and if we are lucky it never opens again.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
    The article and OP are based on the false premises. With no Democratic involvement, President Trump presented a budget with same growth in spending as previously planned. He and other Republicans talked, then, about doubling borrowing, bringing it back to the ranges of 2009 when Democrats controlled the gov't. The parties basically agree on borrowing and spending, except the Republicans want that same level of borrowing during an expansion, meaning very dangerous levels of deficit during the next recession. But the parties are in the same neighborhood on the issue-- major borrowing and spending.

    Contrary to that the OP suggests, the article says Democrats what to change slightly what the gov't does with all this newly increased borrowing. Apparently Democrats are mostly okay with gov't spending and doing it with borrowing, they just want it spent on things that get them elected. The article says Democrats have "privately floated the idea" they might agree to Republicans' borrowing and spending as long as they get their spending too. I find it disgusting.

    So the OP says, what to do; what to do. It would be great fun to see one side get their money. Commenters want to see them figure out a way to make President Obama look bad.

    What would be fun for me is their actually reducing spending and borrowing, me not to be sending $25k to the Treasury because my quarterly ESs last year were not enough. Despite all this baloney, all mainstream politicians agree on massive spending and borrowing. So we just bump up our quarterlies; Q1 is due next week. :(

    I wish people who found great fun in arguing over the crumbs of the Federal budget,
    crumbs
    since there's no debate about dismantling the global empire, Social Security, or the prison industrial complex, would get their jollies some other way, I don't know maybe hurting animals or something, and leave the world to people who want to reduce gov't.
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    • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
      Re: "The article and OP are based on the false premises." My post opened with a direct quote from the article and then drew certain conclusions based on that quote. The conclusions of others may differ, but in itself that does not falsify the premises. Please identify exactly which false premises my original post is based on.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
        "Please identify exactly which false premises my original post is based on."
        Sorry for saying it curtly. It sounds more curt on the screen than I meant it.

        The unstated premise is Republicans mostly oppose gov't spending and borrowing. We can tell the premise is wrong by looking President Trump's proposed budget and his proposal to borrow $1 trillion a year.

        If the premise were true, your logic makes perfect sense to me. In this scenario, I would look for an Option 4 or 5, and agree Option #3 is the best of the three.

        The reasoning is valid, but a premise is wrong, so the result is not sound.
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        • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
          Please re-read my post assuming the opposite premise is true: "Republicans mostly support gov't spending and borrowing." The post still makes perfect sense. Your "unstated premise" is not really a premise of my post at all, and I happen to agree with you that most Republicans do not oppose high government spending and borrowing.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
            If I re-read it supposing Republicans and Democrats support gov't spending and borrowing, I don't understand the part that says if Republicans do #1, it "will guarantee big government as usual for the foreseeable future."
            If we suppose the duopoly supports spending and borrowing, then big gov't as usual is guaranteed regardless.

            The post is literally about a childish squabble. There's no real debate about the major gov't spending, a massive social security system and an empire of bases around the world. But it's supposedly great fun if a few crumbs fall here instead of there. I can see how this matters to people in the politics industry, people who literally get paid to make one another look bad, but people doing the actual work will keep sending in those huge non-fun quarterly estimates.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 12 months ago
      " figure out a way to make President Obama look bad"
      No figuring required. His record of disaster is clear.

      As for Trump, there was never any chance he could follow through on his promises of capital spending and lower taxes unless there are big cuts in government programs. Neither the democrats nor the GOP will be in favor of big enough cuts in government programs to save the US economy from socialism. The dems never want any cuts and the GOP just pretends it wants cuts.

      CG, you voted for people who expanded programs and promised more of the same. After those actions your criticism of Trump's economic plans is hollow and hypocritical.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 12 months ago
        "Neither the democrats nor the GOP will be in favor of big enough cuts in government programs to save the US economy from socialism." This is exactly what I said in a conversation with a colleague yesterday. The transition toward a Venezuela-like system is inevitable now. However, my colleague reminded me that the biggest boon in the Trump election was that we stopped Hillary, at least for a while. He's right about that. I don't see Trump as the monarchist President of my dreams. But, this is still worlds better than where she would have taken us. We bought a little time...a little more time for me to try to pool resources, lighten my inventory and be more ready to pack up and ship out.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
          "this is still worlds better than where [Clinton] would have taken us."
          This is your guess. My guess is if Clinton had won the electoral college and Congress were still controlled by Republicans, spending for FY2018 would have stayed with projections, just as it does in President Trump's budget. The deficit would have stayed in the $450 billion dollar range, less than half of what President Trump proposes.

          We'll never know whose guess is right. I'm not concerned about that. I am concerned that the bipartisan consensus is that we don't even question an expensive and intrusive gov't and we fund it by borrowing.

          "inevitable"
          I am not giving up. One of my Senators has a national debt clock right on the home page of his website. I'm sending his office polite letters saying I'm watching for his efforts to reduce the borrowing.
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          • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
            If you want to reduce government borrowing, the "trillion dollar coin" option in my original post would accomplish that goal. Most people regard deficit spending and borrowing as a single problem. They are in fact two separate problems, and the second one makes the first one worse.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
              " the "trillion dollar coin" option in my original post would [reduce gov't borrowing]."
              I don't think I understand the trillion dollar coin. In that scenario, the mint prints a large sum of money, deposits it in the Fed Reserve, the Fed then "breaks" the large coin/bill for the gov't allowing the gov't to buy back bonds.
              I struggle to see any difference between that an QE. Why not just have the Fed use QE to purchase Treasuries?
              This is more a case of me not understanding the nuts and bolts of the monetary system than disagreeing/agreeing with anything.
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              • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
                Quantitative easing adds to the national debt. The "trillion dollar coin" does not. The coin or coins can be struck by the U.S. Mint and deposited with the Treasury Department, which can then issue paper or electronic money "backed" by these coins, bypassing the Federal Reserve entirely. This money can then be used to fund the deficit without adding to the national debt. There is a precedent: Until the 1970's, unbacked "United States Notes" circulated side by side with "Federal Reserve Notes". Here's an example:
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...
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                • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 12 months ago
                  This is very interesting. I do not think QE adds to the national debt. It's beyond my one semester of macro. It's making me wonder why monetary and fiscal policy are separated at all, why the gov't set up a central bank instead of just doing this.
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                  • Posted by $ 6 years, 12 months ago
                    I'm not sure why the government set up a central bank, but I'm reasonably sure that politically connected bankers had nothing to do with it. :-)
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          • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 12 months ago
            I'm not giving up either, but I expect the resolution will not be peaceful.

            In one respect, your comment regarding Clinton is accurate in that historically having the presidency and congress controlled by the same party has had horrible results regardless of which party had control. However, Clinton would very likely have chosen extreme liberals for the supreme court and the GOP would have eventually approved them resulting in a much worse result in terms of government expansion. There would also have been no chance for any reversal of Obamacare under Hitlery, while that chance still exists under trump.
            I dislike both Hitlery and Trump, and have been consistent in that respect. Trump's choices for cabinet positions supporting the criminal banking cartel is the biggest disappointment albeit predictable.
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