US House Democrats voted unanimously against the Republicans' continuing spending resolution under -4.2 underwater Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (except for Democrat Jared Golden [ME-2], a Blue Dog Democrat who under ranked choice voting in Maine wins by being the second choice of people who voted for someone else).
Senate Minority Leader Democrat Chucky Schumer (-19.6) led eight other Democrats in the US Senate to pass the continuing spending resolution.
Republicans are jumping the shark. Opposing that is popular.
"Among the things I got [at a town hall] were: 'Will you call for Chuck
Schumer to resign?'" the lawmaker said. "Last week I got: 'You need to
tell your leadership they had no right rebuking Democrats for being
strong at'" Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress.
"Another thing I got was: 'Democrats are too nice. Nice and civility doesn't work. Are you prepared for violence?'"
"The level of exasperation is comparable [to the Tea Party] for sure,
even if the issues and policies are very different," said [Jared] Huffman [CA-2].
"The base has been pissed off for a while." ... it "seems to be more widespread" now.
"My constituents have passionately said they are not happy with
Democratic leadership. ... They expect more from me and from Democrats
in Congress."
"If near unanimity against the Republican CR is not definitive evidence
of a party unified in opposition to Donald Trump and Elon Musk, then I
am not sure what would be," said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told Axios that "no one expressed displeasure
with Democrats" during his last two-hour town hall. People are "back to
focusing on Musk and Trump," he said.
"All I know is that most folks are pissed, and scared,
and they hate this chaos and the blatant corruption of Trump and Musk,"
said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio). "Democrats absolutely want leaders who are going to fight back and fix what's broken."
The ruling is significant because the dopes in the Republican Party just rammed through a continuing spending resolution which fully funds the now severely diminished USAID.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s
Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a
federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making
further cuts to the agency. ...
In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District
Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s
position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.
Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he
has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post
where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.” ...
The judge said it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions. ...
Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely
harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their
“constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down
an agency created by Congress.” ...
In the first column are 30 Democrats who infamously voted to abolish the filibuster late in the evening on Jan 19, 2022, which failed 48-52 because of Sinema and Manchin, but happily tried to mount one last week.
The roll call vote in the US Senate is here (the Wikipedia entry is wrong on this, citing a CBS story and dating the vote to Jan 20).
In column two are 7 Democrats who campaigned to abolish the filibuster but who also happily tried to mount one last week.
The 2017 letter
to Mitch McConnell in the last column references the names of 19 Democrats
who then said they were for the filibuster, but last week 5 of them weren't lol.
The irony of all this of course is that Joe Biden's spending for fiscal 2025 was just passed with little modification by Republicans with the help of 10 Democrats (1 Independent) and the Democrats are beating themselves up over it.
But it's kind of hard to crow about Joe Biden's success after you just forced him out of power.
The Senate filibuster is indeed a magical, wonderful, horrible, no good thing. It makes you collect 60 votes to end debate, but then you can vote to make yourself look good right after you betrayed your friends.
The Senate passed a six-month funding bill Friday to avert a
government shutdown hours ahead of the midnight deadline, sending it to
President Donald Trump to sign into law.
The vote was 54-46, with
two Democrats joining all but one Republican in voting yes. Earlier
Friday, the bill cleared a key procedural hurdle with the help of 10
Democrats in a 62-38 vote. Sixty votes were needed to defeat a
Democratic filibuster.
The votes came after a dramatic 48-hour period during which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., broke with most House and Senate Democrats,
announcing he would support moving forward on the bill one day after he
declared it didn’t have the votes. Schumer ultimately voted no on final
passage of the legislation.
The cloture motion roll call 62-38 is here showing the nine Democrats and one Independent vote Yea to defeat their own filibuster.
The final passage roll call 54-46 is here showing eight of the ten, all Democrats, voting their phony Nays: Cortez Masto, Durbin, Fetterman, Gillibrand and Schumer, Hassan, Peters, and Schatz.
Peters, who voted Yea and then Nay, isn't running again next year, and neither is Shaheen, who really didn't care and voted Yea both times with King the Independent.
The anger mirrors less visible Republican discontent with its supine leadership for failing to assert Congress' control over the power of the purse and letting Elon Musk run their show.
... "I know I speak for so many in our caucus when I say Schumer is
misreading this moment. The Senate Dems must show strength and grit by
voting no," said Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.).
... Some House members, in turn, have gotten an earful from constituents. "I
have also never had so many people from home personally texting
me—ANGRY," said another House Democrat. "I don't think they knew who Chuck Schumer was before today," the lawmaker said. "But they know now and they hate him." ...
Even as Ohio Republicans stuck
with President Donald Trump and voted on Tuesday to approve a six-month
government funding bill in the U.S. House, that decision came with a
price — as the GOP plan denied federal funding for a variety of local
projects across the state. ...
Johnson added conservative sweeteners
to the CR, which isn’t “clean” (i.e., a simple extension of current
funding levels for everything) as advertised, but instead adds immediate
money for defense and mass deportation, and cuts domestic spending by
$13 billion. House Democrats already inclined to vote “no” on the CR
because it contains no language forcing the executive branch to actually
spend the money appropriated (which would restrict the power of DOGE or
OMB to unilaterally “freeze” spending, cancel grants or contracts, or
fire personnel) now have even less motivation to keep the government
open. ...
To kill the CR, Democrats would have to launch a filibuster, and in that
circumstance it would be much easier for Republicans to blame the
Donkey Party for shutting down the federal government, despite the clear
intention of the Trump administration to keep gutting the government if
it remains open. If just seven Senate Democrats choose to join
Republicans (or all but Rand Paul, who is demanding deeper cuts; he’s
effectively matched with Democrat John Fetterman, who’s vowed to vote to avoid a shutdown), the CR will pass.
If Senate Democrats
are put to the challenge and subsequently cave, they will have more than
likely forfeited any real Democratic leverage for the remainder of 2025
beyond stirring up public unhappiness with Trump 2.0. Appropriations
aside, most of Trump’s legislative agenda will be enacted via a gigantic
budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered. So the decision
not to deploy a filibuster on the one crucial occasion it is available
will represent an admission of powerlessness that won’t make rank-and-file Democrats happy. ...
The other Republican opponent of the CR is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He won his 2022 Senate race with 61.8% of the vote and won't need to stand for re-election until 2028 when Trump is history.
Massie is unafraid. He's been there, done that, and is still standing:
... For years, members of the House Freedom Caucus have been predictable
“no” votes on stopgaps and other spending measures that do not codify
their priorities, railing against leaders for failing to approve
appropriations bills on time.
But now, many of those members — happy with how the Trump
administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking a
sledgehammer to the federal government — are being atypically
cooperative and signaling support for Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.)
plan to pass a largely clean continuing resolution (CR) until Sept. 30,
the end of the fiscal year. Trump endorsed the full-year CR last week.
“My bottom line is: It’s a step forward, again, based on the word
that we’re being given from the White House, that they will continue to
do the work, that the president supports it and wants it, I’m
comfortable,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a deficit hawk who is part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. ...
These bumblebrains really don't get it.
Elon Musk and DOGE have usurped the role of Congress and have made the Congress irrelevant by accomplishing what they never do.
They should just pack it in. Or maybe DOGE should just eliminate them.
After all, they can't list any accomplishments, can they?
... many Democrats are pressing leadership to withhold support for
any spending plan that doesn’t take steps to ensure the allocated funds
go where Congress intended — a response to Trump’s efforts to gut
federal programs Congress had previously funded.
“There will have to be some type of guarantees, because we’re very
unsure about whether things that we’ve already approved are actually
going to be expended,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said. ...
“House Republicans are marching the country towards a government
shutdown that was started by Elon Musk,” House Minority Leader Hakeem
Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Tuesday.
“Rosa DeLauro is still at the table. We need House Republicans to join her.” ...
Heading into the fight, some Democrats are already warning that they
won’t support in any form. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said it makes
no sense for Republicans to claim billions of dollars of waste and abuse
across federal agencies, and then back a CR that funds that same waste
and abuse. ...
You've got 34 Republicans pissed off at passage of the American Relief Act on December 20th by Mike Johnson and 170 Republicans.
Hakeem Jeffries has already told everyone Democrats will not help elect Mike Johnson speaker again because he stiffed them on the continuing spending resolution. Democrats are pissed off, too, although 196 did vote Yea on the bill.
So Republicans absolutely need those 34 to re-elect Johnson to speaker on Jan 3rd.
But let's say they don't, and the process drags out like it did with Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The 2024 election results go to Congress in joint session for casting of the electoral college votes on January 6th, but that wouldn't happen without a speaker to swear-in the new House.
. . . there will be no Democrats available to save him or the extreme MAGA
Republicans from themselves based on the breaching of a bipartisan
agreement that reflected priorities good for the American people.