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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's strategy of holding multiple votes to reopen government agencies one at a time is putting maximum pressure on Republican leaders. The GOP’s main strategy is to hold defections under 55.
That's the point where Pelosi would have 290 votes and could override a potential Trump veto. As of now, Republicans expect there to be as many as a couple dozen within their ranks whom they are allowing to do the right thing for their constituents and try to reopen the government. "We have a lot of members who are gonna want to vote for these things," a Republican aide told Politico reporters. "Publicly, we will never tell them to do it. Privately, we will tell them to do what they have to do." Yep, Republican leadership knows what has to be done for the country, for its members, for its constituents, but it’s sticking with Trump.
"The biggest thing we can do to back the president up is to keep it below veto proof," the GOP aide added. "That's a win for us." Losing fewer than 55 Republican votes, keeping a quarter of the government closed, and propping up Trump is their "win." It took the intervention of Vice President Mike Pence to keep the defections on last week's House vote to seven, and those seven are feeling pressure, says an aide who works for one of them. "Republican leadership is leaning on folks. They were pretty pissed at the seven Republicans who voted for the package last week."
Over the next four days, the House is going to be voting, one by one, to fund agencies and programs like the IRS, food stamps, national parks, and housing programs, responding to the most urgent needs exposed by the Trump administration's incompetence and malevolence. "We’re working this week on the ones that have a big impact on families," a Democratic aide explained.
Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, explained further in an interview Monday that the House wants to "isolate the [border wall] issue, take a month to discuss it, but [not] hold up all the essential services—like the Agriculture Department, Interior, parks, housing, transportation—all the other parts of the government. … The president is really causing great hardship to the average person in this country."
That is, the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is the linchpin holding the shutdown together, and who is also a target of the Pelosi strategy. When the House keeps voting, and keeps gaining Republican votes, to reopen government, and McConnell refuses to bring any of the bills to the Senate floor, the blame is going to fall increasingly on him.