Discussion: Would Trump Shut Down The Government Again? Chief Of Staff Says 'Um, Yeah!'

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No more shutdowns EVER! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/government-shutdown-legislation.html And include the debt ceiling as well, Government by hostage taking will destroy the republic.

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Coulter: Doesnt matter, I will never become Trump’s twitter friend again.

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Well go ahead make Pelosi’s day

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Mulvaney also said Trump will secure the U.S. border with Mexico “with or without Congress.” The GOP now officially endorses a dictatorship over our Constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

As the last GOP president said, “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator. Hehehe.”

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In 3 weeks time , Mr Doofus is closing America down for the rest of the year .

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We just need a simple, two-part law:

  1. If appropriations aren’t passed for a given area, all funding maintains at prior levels for 90 days. After which, every 90 days it automatically increases by 5% so long as new appropriations haven’t been passed (This is to protect agencies from being cut to death by a refusal to ever pass a bill).

  2. All Congresspersons, Senators and the President/VP are not allowed to leave Washington, D.C. until the appropriations are passed. And each member of the House and Senate must be in their offices or on the Floor for at least 8 hours each day, including weekends and holidays.

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Shutting down the government again should warrant impeachment. A “president” allowing the government to shut down, and thus victimize hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent people is dereliction of duty and should be considered a criminal act.

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I like this, but I would add a third part that would call for withholding the pay of all members of Congress during any period that normal appropriations for any standing agency are held up without congressional approval.

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I’ve thought a lot about that, but have generally rejected it as the vast majority of the members of the House and Senate are already independently wealthy millionaires, so it’s not a disincentive.

That’s why I came up with the alternative of locking them in to town. They do like to travel.

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Trump seems like the kind of guy who would need multiple kicks from Mitch’s proverbial mule to learn anything.

Except he’s going to fold. If he was going to declare a “national emergency”, he would have done so already.

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he ain’t going to do it again. Trump’s a looser

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Naw. He’s saving it for one of the Fridays when he wakes up to see Jr. being frog-marched out of Trump Tower.

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+1. Trump is moving is fat jaw because he has basically nothing else. 55-60% of the public blamed republicans, 35% the D’s for the shutdown. After the D’s put a package on the table, and negotiate, and the press covers it as the “deal” ($5.7B in border security funding, some of which can be used for existing designs for wall/barriers in exiting areas, not new walls) a deal that multiple republicans, including Rubio today have sketched out, if he balks, my guess is he will have to do so via a veto. No way that republicans in the senate will hold tight on a “wall”.

And if Trump wants to be impossible, well then 75% of the public will blame him and his party, 20% the Democrats.

Trump’s polical capital and trust with republicans on the house is shot, and they are NOT going to follow him into a box canyon again. Pray they do it, but they will not. And Trump is too much of a coward to own another shutdown on his own.

and P.s. no doubt McConnell will tell Trump that if he vetos a package, he might get overridden in the senate, which would destroy his presidency. These kinds of threats will be made to try to keep Trump in line.

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A smart Chief of Staff, somebody who could think on their feet better than a pot of moldy oatmeal, would respond “the President doesn’t shut down government any more or less than the House and Senate do, it’s a three-party process”.

Perhaps Mulvaney is not as smart as a pot of moldy oatmeal.

Of course, even this is being overly generous, because this was about the most predictable possible question, and no thinking on the feet should be required. There ought to be a smart, snappy canned response which has been PR-tested to within an inch of its life by somebody much more expert at the game than me.

But this White House fails at the most basic aspects of competence in every sense and at every opportunity.

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But if the PR-tested response isn’t also maximally macho, you’ll get roasted by the boss when you get back to the office. So you can’t do what a competent White House would do. You have to be a macho butthead. You have to bluff. It’s the only play Trump knows.

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I think it’s a great idea. I’d love to see him go under 30%.

The wall has become the only glue holding things together. Hanging back and letting the issue kind of flutter in the background without much noise is the only way Trump can salvage his dwindling support. They’ll be able to pretend he’s planning his three dimensional chess moves or whatever other nonsense they choose to cling to. But if he hoists the flag high and fails in another charge up the hill – and he will – he’ll drop another 5 percentage points.

Oh happy day. And McConnell got whipped too.

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My fantasy is The Hunger Games clause to any anti-shutdown legislation. All legislators who would hold the country hostage, regardless of age or party, have their names put in a bowl. Four congressmen and two senators, whose names are drawn by suffering citizens, would be immediately sent to an active military conflict zone. No special treatment, no salary, for 180 days. Their seats would remain unfilled. The process is repeated every week.

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Should be called I Can’t Believe He Said that With a Straight Face the Nation.

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Understatement of the year. He’s just another fathead radical who thinks the purpose of government is to prevent corporations from raping the country. He fits right in with the rest of the scum in the Trump “Administration.”

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