Rethuglicans To Retaliate For Democrats Not Capitulating To Their Demands

Mitch McConnell and his gang of Rethuglican senators will revive his “total obstruction” policy from the Obama era today out of retaliation for President Biden and Democratic leaders not capitulating to their bad faith weak-ass counterproposal for COVID-19 economic relief by attempting to sabotage the budget reconciliation process for the Democratic COVID-19 economic relief bill. Why do these thugs hate America so?

POLITICO reports ‘Vote-a-rama’ to give GOP a chance to inflict pain on Dems (excerpt):

The [budget reconciliation process] that shrinks the vote hurdle from 60 to 51 is often described as “a powerful budget tool.” But reconciliation is also painful to wield. The first agonizing step: enduring a barrage of amendments from Republicans, who have promised to inflict maximal political pain on Democrats during an unbridled evening of “vote-a-rama” on Thursday.

Democrats, for their part, just want to get it over with. Urging the American public not to watch the bruising legislative “fight” that could keep senators voting late into the night, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) bemoaned the free-for-all amendment process as “the worst part of the United States Senate.”

“We need to remember what this is all about. This is not about a goofy 10-hour or 12-hour or 15-hour process where we stack amendments and try to set each other up, that we’ll somehow trick someone into taking a bad position that can be turned into a campaign advertisement,” Schatz said on the Senate floor. “It is nonsense, and everybody should ignore it if they can. Do anything to not watch vote-a-rama.”

Republicans have teed up hundreds of [bad faith] amendments, including to preserve former President Donald Trump’s border wall, reverse Biden’s action to nix the Keystone XL pipeline and create “deficit-neutral reserve funds” on everything from supporting resources for police to prohibiting “sex-selective abortion.”

That public hazing is Senate tradition, the price the majority party pays to approve a budget resolution — an essential first move in bypassing the filibuster and passing major policy changes with a simple majority, the way Democrats did to enact Obamacare and Republicans did to achieve the 2017 tax cuts. This time the tough votes and potential all-nighter are the dreaded down payment on another giant legislative dream: the new president’s $1.9 trillion relief package.

Note: As Congressional Democrats move forward with President Joe Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion rescue bill despite Republican calls to pare back the legislation, a new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that more than two-thirds of Americans support the proposal:

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans support the Biden administration’s proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus relief bill in response to the coronavirus pandemic, as 68 percent say they support it and 24 percent oppose it.

Democrats support it 97 – 3 percent, independents support it 68 – 25 percent and Republicans are opposed 47 – 37 percent, with 16 percent not offering an opinion.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans are in favor of $1,400 stimulus payments to Americans with 78 percent supporting and 18 percent opposing.

A majority also say 61 – 36 percent that they support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“Struggling to pay the bills, American households need an infusion of cash and need it now. So give it to them, is the resounding judgement of the public,” added Malloy.

Republicans are an outlier in American politics, far more so now than they were in 2012 when the high priests of political centrism, Thomas E. Mann and Norm Ornstein, warned Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans are the Problem:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Today’s Republican Party is an anti-democratic crypto-fascist personality cult of Donald Trump and QAnon conspiracy cult, and a seditious and insurrectionist violent domestic terrorist organization. America does not negotiate with terrorists.

POLITICO continues:

But the hard work to employ the power of reconciliation will not end when the marathon amendment process winds down, the budget resolution is adopted and senators’ resting cots are hauled away after a night of “yeas” and “nays.”

If Democrats do decide to use reconciliation, they will have to carefully craft their bill to ensure the Senate parliamentarian agrees the policies qualify under the special budget rules and will likely have to ditch some provisions to make it work. [Or they can vote to disregard the parliamentarian, an important point]. Then comes the task of getting all Senate Democrats to vote for final passage, as well as more than 200 lawmakers in the House, where Democrats hold only a 10-vote majority over the GOP.

“The biggest challenge that the Democrats have is staying united. They can’t help themselves,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, said in an interview.

Indeed, progressive Democrats are pressing their leaders to include other policies that could make it difficult to attract the votes of centrists in the party for final passage of the pandemic relief package, including an increase in the federal minimum wage [See Quinnipiac Poll above] and tax hikes for corporations and the highest-earning Americans. [Not a problem for most Democrats].

“That’s gonna be their problem,” Smith [sneered.] “Get a bag of popcorn because it can be interesting watching the Democrats fight within themselves.”

Even if the aid package clears Congress through reconciliation, the headache of using the budget tool continues. As Republicans most recently experienced after the 2017 tax overhaul, the maneuver triggers automatic cuts to Medicare and other safety net programs. While Congress has continually voted later to avoid those reductions, Democrats will need Republican votes in the Senate to avert such a cliff.

On Thursday, the reconciliation challenges will begin for centrist Democrats. As Schatz lamented in his foreboding preamble to “vote-a-rama,” many of the amendments Democrats will be forced to vote on could become fodder for campaign attack ads. [That’s all this is about]. Because Democrats hold only 51 votes in the Senate, including Vice President Kamala Harris, more moderate Democrats will be especially torn as they face votes on amendments Republicans have crafted to put them in a pinch.

“Senate Republicans will be ready and waiting with a host of amendments to improve the rushed procedural step that’s being jammed through,” [evil GOP bastard] Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor.

“We’ll be getting senators on the record about whether taxpayers should fund checks for illegal immigrants, whether Democrats should raise taxes on small businesses in the midst of this historic crisis and whether generous federal funding should pour into school districts where the unions refuse to let schools open,” McConnell said. “And this is just a small taste.”

Fuck you, Mitch. There needs to be a particularly horrible future in Hell for you.

I have oft repeated in several postings over the years, including this one, The ‘Enemy of The People,’ Mitch McConnell, is the real radical (snippet):

As Dana Milbank wrote, Mitch McConnell, the man who broke America:

By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: “He broke America.” No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.

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As Charles Pierce says, There Is No More Loathsome Creature Walking Our Political Landscape Than Mitch McConnell:

He doesn’t have the essential patriotism god gave a snail. He pledges allegiance to his donors, and they get what they want. He’s selling out his country, and he’s doing it in real-time and out in the open. This is worse than McCarthy or McCarran ever were. Mitch McConnell is the the thief of the nation’s soul.

As historian Christopher Browning has written, “If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.” The Suffocation of Democracy.