The Congressional Budget Office issued projections Wednesday for three different scenarios about the length of the government shutdown as it nears a full month.
The Republicans do control every branch, but cannot reopen the govt on their own.
In the US Senate, technically, you only need a simple majority (50 plus the VP) to pass something. The issue is around something called cloture, which is ending debate on a bill that is introduced. That takes 60 votes. If you try to push a bill through that can’t pass cloture, the opposing party can simply refuse to vote for cloture and the bill will never be able to be voted on.
The Republicans need to pass a bill to fund the govt, but they only have 53 Senators so they cannot force cloture on their own. They need some Dems to vote for it as well.
What a wonderful politcal and economic system that incentivises politicians to pass good policy and run great political campaigns to further improve the conditions of all workers!
or they could rewrite the rules using the “nuclear” option or the “constitutional” option and change the cloture rule with their simple majority. but they do not want to do this, because enough of them may not support such a rule re-write, and win or lose, the attempt itself would publicly betray the fiction of a “democrat shutdown” and hang the entire shutdown on their fractious party not being able to get their head and ass wired together. it has gone on too long for them to actually re-open government at this point, so they are betting hard on people actually believing–despite their 9 months of running victory laps about ruling unopposed–they are somehow not able to reopen government without those pesky democrats.
The Republicans do control every branch, but cannot reopen the govt on their own.
In the US Senate, technically, you only need a simple majority (50 plus the VP) to pass something. The issue is around something called cloture, which is ending debate on a bill that is introduced. That takes 60 votes. If you try to push a bill through that can’t pass cloture, the opposing party can simply refuse to vote for cloture and the bill will never be able to be voted on.
The Republicans need to pass a bill to fund the govt, but they only have 53 Senators so they cannot force cloture on their own. They need some Dems to vote for it as well.
What a wonderful politcal and economic system that incentivises politicians to pass good policy and run great political campaigns to further improve the conditions of all workers!
or they could rewrite the rules using the “nuclear” option or the “constitutional” option and change the cloture rule with their simple majority. but they do not want to do this, because enough of them may not support such a rule re-write, and win or lose, the attempt itself would publicly betray the fiction of a “democrat shutdown” and hang the entire shutdown on their fractious party not being able to get their head and ass wired together. it has gone on too long for them to actually re-open government at this point, so they are betting hard on people actually believing–despite their 9 months of running victory laps about ruling unopposed–they are somehow not able to reopen government without those pesky democrats.