Maybe President Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney is just following the advice of his boss, but the hostage he’s taking is affordable health care for millions of Americans. Just read this and try not to gasp:
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that he hopes to use negotiations to keep the government open past April 28 in an effort to force Democrats to back some funding for creating a new wall along the U. S-Mexico border — a risky move that could provoke a spending showdown with congressional Democrats next week.
Mulvaney said the White House would be open to funding some of the Democrats’ priorities — such as paying insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — if Democrats agree to fund some of the more controversial parts of President Trump’s agenda, notably the border wall.
Offering to pay for some of the Democrats’ priorities would mean relenting on slashing the Environmental Protection Agency or monies for the humanities and arts. Saying that you’ll follow the law and give subsidies to people to afford health insurance isn’t a real negotiating tactic. It’s “give us the racist wall or we kill all the poor people.” And it’s not even legal.
It’s consistent with Trump’s method of operation, though. Rather than honor a contract, he’ll refuse to pay it until threatened with legal action. Then he’ll countersue and offer a pittance of what he owes as a reasonable compromise. But his form of gangster capitalism isn’t going to fly with the U.S. Congress or with the courts.
Opposition to the wall is bipartisan, and opposition to this particular gambit is near universal.
Republican leaders and members of the House and Senate appropriations committees had hoped to avoid a spending confrontation early in Trump’s administration by negotiating directly with Democrats, whose votes will be necessary to pass any spending bill. Republicans hold a slim 52-to-48 advantage in the Senate, meaning they will need at least eight Democrats to reach the 60 votes required to pass spending measures in that chamber.
Math. How does it work?
Don’t ask the people in the Trump administration because they’re still operating as if magic can overcome arithmetic.
Mulvaney said that the White House is willing to negotiate, but only if Democrats bend on funding the wall.
“If they tell us to pound sand, I think that’s probably a disappointing indicator of where the next four years is going to go,” Mulvaney said. “If they tell us, however, that they recognize that President Trump won an election, and he should get some of his priorities funded for that reason, elections have consequences, as folks who win always like to say.”
If the Democrats wants some advice, I suggest that they can borrow the following Tweet from former Mexican president Vicente Fox:
Sean Spicer, I've said this to @realDonaldTrump and now I'll tell you: Mexico is not going to pay for that fucking wall. #FuckingWall
— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) January 25, 2017
The Republican leadership and members of the House and Senate appropriations committees can borrow it, too.
I know Trump’s law tells us that yes, they really are this incompetent. But it does seem like every Trump fuckup is perfectly engineered to do maximum damage to our institutions and our credibility as a functioning democracy.
One could argue that Putin’s still getting his money’s worth, though he may regret his purchase nonetheless.
It’s just a necessary step to finally rid ourselves of the neoliberalacons. Putin at least understands what is needed to advance progressive policies.
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The institutions failed long ago. Stamping on dust just redistributes the dust.
This empty cynicism is not useful. The institutions we’re talking about are fundamental to democratic government, to the safety and prosperity of all of us. They’ve been under sustained Republican assault for the entirety of my lifetime, slowly chipped away one norm, regulation, or standard at a time. Resignation cedes the battlefield to the vandals. It’s our duty to each other to defend and improve the civil and political society we inherited.
No! That’s all, just NO!
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Public opinion polls also have consequences, and neither The Wall nor Donald Trump nor the GOP is currently doing so hot.
And many more people voted for Clinton than Trump, so shove it.
“won an election…should get some of his priorities”
Once again, this is where it would have been useful for Dems to have started a daily rhetoric that popular-vote losing prezes have NO mandate. They are a latent failure of our system, caused by our refusal to correct the anti-democratic failures of our constitution. Unfortunately such prezes are commanderers-in-chief, but they have no “mandate” for anything. Certainly not for funding Trumper’s absurd symbolic wailing wall—which BTW Trumper promised Mexico (not we) would pay for. He always blathered that no appropriation for it would be needed. So go out and collect the payment, Trumper.
As for math, I really do not see why the first step in the House is to see if there is any gub’mint operations/debt ceiling legislation which can pass with Repub votes. If Repubs themselves can’t pass the required legislation with everything Trumper wants, they have no working majority and the Dems then stipulate precisely what would have to be added to a clean bill to raise the ceiling and keep the gub’mint open. Resolve the manufactured rightwing lawsuit seeking to have Obamacare subsidies declared illegal by passing a simple amendment. Demand the restoration of all proposed EPA cuts and the resignation of Pruitt. Something. Trumper gets nothing but the avoidance of a meltdown.
So if you want Dems votes, it’s a “clean” bill plus sweeteners for the Dems. If Repubs don’t like it and provide no votes, it shows Trumper is utterly impotent and his economy implodes because his party is not competent to govern. So yes, Trump stooge Mulvaney, elections have consequences (except if a Dem prez wins the popular vote, of course).
Democrats never say stuff like that. They’re too polite, or something.
They better say stuff like that. Specifically, ACA full funding thru 2018. But, only after a vote where the GOP fails to pass the CR.
This is essentially the point that has been made in other contexts: that the only “working majority” in the House is a bipartisan majority; and that it is long since time that the House Democrats forced the Republicans to recognize this fact, ideally by a formal division of power. In any case, the Democrats need to stop allowing themselves to be shut out of power while providing most of the votes for must-pass Republican legislation.
The House Democrats, at a minimum, should come up with both a list of demands and a public strategy for explaining their position. They should make clear that their requirements are not “partisan” demands but necessities for humane, rational governance based on truth and evidence — precisely the kind of governance the Republican Party has abandoned. Having staked out such a solid and easily-defended position, they should let the Republicans fail until they come around. It is essential for the future of the world in general and the country in particular that the utter failure of Republican governance should be exposed.
And what’s the precise relationship between the debt ceiling and the upcoming gub’mint shutdown? They are generally two separate issues, aren’t they?
The debt ceiling will be exceeded sometime in late summer, perhaps as early as late August.
The government is only funded for about another week.
many thanks. I thought they were more closely related in time this time around.
Trump is holding a gun to his own head, saying “Give me what I want or the idiot gets it!”
Maybe because he saw it work in “Blazing Saddles,” he thinks it will work for him.
Dems better be sure that gun is not too big for those donald hands.
As a comparatively-trivial side point, does anyone else nostalgically pining for a time when a White House official would never use a term like “tell us to pound sand”?
I mean, it’s really vulgar.
Yes, that caught my eye. Just putting aside politicians and White House officials……it’s one of those phrases that are deal killers if used. Whatever the subject, the conversation will immediately degenerate.
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You seem to be under the dreadful delusion that the Trump Administration gives the tiniest sliver of fucks about ‘the American people’.
The entire POINT of everything they’ve done has been to to go all “HULK SMASH” on this country, the better to allow the oligarchs to sweep up the pieces into their pockets.
They don’t care whether folks get their Social Security chcks or not…the next elections are in November 2018; given that it’s felt like 4 years already and we’re just to the 100 day point, they figure they have a year or more to grievously fuck over the country before they have to worry about it hurting them at the polls.
And the truly sad part is that they’re probably fucking right.
But thank god we didn’t get a warmongering corporate shill in the White House!
How will it hurt the Trump administration at the polls if, according to gallup, they have an 87% approval score from Republicans?
They are by this measure doing exactly what “the American people” want.
We’re all looking in the wrong place – Trump is just the symptom…
Republicans are a small percentage of the electorate. GWB’s approval among Republicans was well over 80% for most of his term, and rarely dropped below 70%. In the meantime Republican party identification plummeted and the Democrats stomped them the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Obviously Republican legislators concerned about primary challenges are going to be wary of opposing Trump while his R-approval numbers are high but overall his consistently terrible approval numbers limit the damage he’s able to do and the incentive congress might otherwise have to cooperate. Mulvaney’s argument that the Democrats should agree to fund Trump’s idiot wall would be significantly more compelling if Trump had any support outside the wingnut base.