Senate Passes Bipartisan Bill To Protect Washington D.C. From House GOP Budget Slash

Originally published at: Senate Passes Bipartisan Bill To Protect Washington D.C. From House GOP Budget Slash - TPM – Talking Points Memo

Senators moved quickly to cobble together a standalone bill to shield Washington D.C. from a $1 billion budget cut written into the House Republican continuing resolution that 10 Senate Democrats helped pass Friday. The D.C. bill passed with unanimous consent on a voice vote, a sign of its bipartisan backing. “This legislation will make sure…

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I am refusing to start the weekend in a rage and so should you.

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It’s a Republican controlled….everything.

Keep that in mind when you feel the need to take a shit on Democrats for the ills of all that is good and wonderful…even if you believe they are the reason for…

reasons

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Does this mean anything? It’s not an amendment to the CR. It’s completely performative.

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Probably not. If they thought it was really important, they would have put it into their version of the bill requiring the House to come back and vote, or go into shutdown. I won’t be the least bit surprised if this bill doesn’t pass in the House…will anyone?

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Perhaps, the Republicans also targeted the District because the majority of residents are people of color.

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How does that distinguish it from anything else the fascists are doing?

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That’s awesome!

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Unless and until they get buy in from the House.

One thing is clear: Trump Inc. now knows for sure that Schumer Inc will succumb to extortion. Expect to see more of it in the future.

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For some MAGA types, there are likely countervailing impulses at play: an instinct to punish D.C., a very liberal city, and its Democratic city government,

So drilled into their RW anger-tainment, they only want to punish those who disagree.

We will retake the govt. and punish them in return. And on and on.

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Agree…

Everyone is as pissed at the establishment as i have been for years.

A lot a folks woke up today.

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Basically 10 Democrats (10!) caved to help the GQP keep burning down the government. Not too surprised at Schumer but thought Jeffries would have more in him for the fish. Guess not.

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Schumer honestly needs to cede his position as minority leader. I can’t imagine the majority of the caucus is happy with this debacle.

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Regarding the cave by Schumer and the Chicken S**t caucus:

I think it was a tactical and substantive mistake. Even if you concede their argument that the goal was to prevent worst case scenarios of a shutdown with Donald Trump at the helm, it still doesn’t justify voting for cloture on the merits. Here’s why:

  • Trump/Musk are going to ignore the CR (and have said as much). They’re going to keep cutting away. So your performative act for the greater good doesn’t mean jack s**t to him, sorry.
  • The CR contains some provisions that attempt to codify some of the Doge cuts. That helps the Trumpers in court to justify some of their actions. Why give them a leg to stand on in court when the losses for Trump are piling up?
  • The GOP never needed the Dems to pass the CR. The GOP could have made a motion under Senate rules to waive the filibuster and pass it by simple majority. Why not make that argument and make the GOP own their crappy budget?
  • As painful as a shutdown is, they’re often temporary, the workers are furloughed (not terminated) and the impact, though significant, is quantifiable and limited. Compare that to the proposed FY '26 budget, which will embody all of Project '25’s greatest hits. The SS/medicare/medicaid/Education, Environment cuts are going to be devastating and will impact far more people than a shutdown. The GOP doesn’t need to get through cloture to pass that bill. It will be done via reconciliation with a simple majority. The GOP will add the sweetener of a massive tax cut to soften the blow. Dems will have no procedural power to stop it. So all the Dems did was to kick the can down the road and subject more people to worse cuts.

The only way to slow the GOP train down is to make them spend political capital for every little thing they want to do and to raise their negatives.

Rejecting the CR and then spending the next 30 to 60 days pounding them into the ground about everything they’re trying to cut was the one path we had to stalling them. But we ceded that opportunity. Now, the GOP is going to be able to pass the budget it wants with relatively little political capital spent and Dems will be left having ceded their only leverage to fight them.

Schumer didn’t act out of a well reasoned position for the greater good. He was caught flat footed with no plan b after the House GOP got the bill over the line and panicked because he had not spent time building arguments in the media and within the caucus on a strategy to beat the GOP in a shutdown war. It’s political incompetence. It’s the sign of an old guard that wants to play by old rules, but we are dealing with a Nazi in the WH. We crossed the rubicon last November. The old Republic is dead and we must fight on different terms. The inability to thin things through and have the stomach for a fight cost Dems today and it will cost the American people very dearly in the fall when that budget is passed into law.

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Dead On analysis.

The House explicitly stuck in the provision stripping DC of funding. Of course, there won’t be any buy in.

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The citizens of DC are wonderful people. It’s the many Reps that come here from around the country and sit in the House chamber that are creeps and losers.