A quick overview of what caused the shutdown
A few weeks ago, I wrote an explanation of the present government shutdown.
As a quick reminder, the shutdown is the Republican’s fault…and ONLY their fault…because the House never passed its appropriations bills on time. Then it passed a dirty Continuing Resolution (CR) that it knew the Democrats wouldn’t vote for. (More on that later.) So here we are.
Since then, Mike Johnson has refused to let the House do any business because…Epstein files.
Also since then, the Senate has put the same CR up for a vote…thirteen times! That’s not thirteen CR’s revised to address Democrat’s concerns. That’s not thirteen CR’s reworked or revised by Republicans to take care of some of the anomalies in their first CR. It’s the SAME CR put up for a vote…thirteen times!
Here’s where the feckless, lazy media come in
Take a look at this headline: “Government shutdown hits 4-week mark as Senate fails to advance GOP funding bill for 13th time.” First, that language “GOP funding bill”, while not utterly false, is a good example of “not quite true” weasel wording. Is a CR a “funding bill”? It seems that an appropriations bill would be a funding bill given that it creates a law as to how the government will, you know, be funded.
Also, has the GOP put forth thirteen different “funding bills” in an effort to find something that the Democrats might find acceptable? You would be forgiven if that’s how you read that headline. But you’d be wrong. Republicans have put the same CR that the Democrats found objectionable (because it would raise health care insurance premiums bigly) thirteen times. (I couldn’t find anything in the article that made it clear what’s actually happening.)
Even the usually reliable outlet, The Guardian, had this to say: “For the 13th time, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill that would have funded federal agencies through 21 November.” Once again, it’s those darned Democrats blocking the honest, hard-working Republicans as they simply try to get the government back to business, right?
Later, in the same article, there’s this: “The minority party has refused to provide the necessary support for the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate ….”
But isn’t this true? Yes, strictly speaking, it is. Here’s another way of putting it: “The majority party has refused to revise the continuing resolution in any way so as to address the minority party’s concerns. The House, controlled by the majority party, refuses to even meet to discuss the shutdown or to work on appropriations bills. The Senate majority party, falling in line with Trump’s demand, refuses to negotiate at all with the minority party, insisting only on bringing the same continuing resolution up for a vote over and over…and over…again.” (And, remember…calling it a “funding bill” or a “bill” rather than what it really is, a continuing resolution, is lazy and misleading.) You’ll need to do a lot of web searching to find the article that points to any of that.
I have a favor to ask...
Chat with your friends about the shutdown to find out what they know and how they see it. Do they know how there came to be a shutdown in the first place? Are they aware that the House hasn’t met at all during the shutdown? Do they know that Senate Republicans aren’t putting together good faith attempts to re-open the government? Do they know that they’re all following Trump's orders NOT to negotiate? Then come back here and let us know what you’ve found out.
There is a lot of disinformation out there, and a fair amount of it is due to our unavailing media.It’s up to all of us to set the record straight.
