The Democrats have come up with a counteroffer:
As they opened negotiations with Republicans over budget cuts, the White House and Congressional Democrats on Thursday offered to trim an additional $6.5 billion from current spending, a figure far short of the Republican goal of cutting agency budgets by $61 billion.
The $6.5 billion isn’t painless but it isn’t anything we can’t live with. The plan in the Senate is to introduce two bills (the Democrats’ and the House version) and demonstrate that neither of them have any chance of passing.
The Senate vote could be particularly helpful, aides said, in showing the 87 new Republican members of the House that the $61 billion in cuts cannot survive, giving the leadership leverage in pushing for a compromise that can pass.
But the House Republicans have a strategy to deal with that.
Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican and the majority leader, said Thursday that if lawmakers were unable to reach a deal, House Republicans would continue to pursue cuts through temporary budget bills.
“Our intention is to continue to go forward reducing spending at the rate of $2 billion a week until we can see some signal from the Senate that they are serious about cutting spending,” Mr. Cantor said.
So, it will be a series of continuing resolutions backed up by a series of threats to shut down the government if each new resolution doesn’t contain at least $2 billion more in cuts. The House can play that game all year long for all they care. They’ll consider it a successful effort to keep their promises.
So, how long do we want to play this game before we let them shut down the government? When will they get the maximum blame?
How long do we play this game? Until the Dems do something that makes it look like they are either shutting down the government or cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Dems have been kicking the can down the road on confrontation with the Republicans for ten years. It’s an ingrained habit, euphemistically called, “keeping your powder dry.” The Dems in the Senate need new leadership, but I can’t name a one of them who has the strategic smarts to get done what needs to be done. And that is fundamentally because of the disunity in the caucus. The Conservadems have dug in their heels as much as the Repubicans have. It is only when it doesn’t matter that Senate Dems can get unity in this Congress.
Obama’s a classic case of the nonconfrontational democrat, too.
My understanding is the public is already ready to blame the GOP and not Obama for a shutdown, although congressional democrats get some blame as well.
i say let ’em do it. let the crazies get their way, and see how the public (including their supporters) like i when they can’t go to national parks, can’t buy a house, experience longer lines at the airport, get delays in their food stamps and medicare… fuck ’em.
Well, if the crazies get their way, will it be you who’s on the street?
quite possibly, yes, because my job is tied to federal funding.
but there you go, in the classic democratic fashion, trying to avoid a confrontation. On of the reasons the last shutdown bit rhe GOP in the ass was people were hurting, it was all out in the open, and everyone knew who was to blame.
That’s why I say if they want a replay, let them have it. Bring it. It’s going to work out about as well for them.
Hey, not OK. I’m no Democrat. To classify myself, I’m on the Marxist left.
And my question was if you would be on the street, not if you would lose your job, which I definitely hope you don’t. I assume you’d get unemployment insurance, etc., and possibly have other support.
I know someone who is on permanent disability and is very concerned that if there is a shutdown he will be, literally, on the street. He has no family, and if he can’t get his social security payments, he can’t make rent. He doesn’t work because he can’t. There are millions of people like him in the country, for whom neither party speaks, though there are some individuals who do, (one, Sanders, is of course not in either party). What about those people?
The President seems to take this kind of logic into account, however imperfect he is. Witness the deal cut last December, so reviled by some progressives, so-called. He figured that if he didn’t cut a deal, there would be a lot of people on the street. So, you cut a deal.
dude, my g/f and i are already setting money aside to carry our elderly, fixed-income neighbor through the shutdown. I know exactly what’s gonna happen.
But as I’ve said that’s what it’s gonna take. It’s gonna take people hurting (and publicly so) for people to say “enough is enough.” that’s just how it is.
Maybe the 1960s civil rights protestors shoulda just cut a deal, so they wouldn’t have had dogs and firehoses turned on them. that way, no one would have been hurt.
BAZINGA!!
It’s a slippery slope when one advocates for a worsening of conditions so that they may become better in a way we would want later on. That’s sort of like Lenin’s argument about trade unionism–oppose it, because the unions will only get piecemeal gains and not overturn the system. Lenin, who had lots of extremely good qualities (now, I’m gonna get it), created a party that presumed to speak for the working classes in Russia. It’s a slippery slope, figuring one knows what’s best for someone else when they might think differently. I don’t think people on fixed incomes are gunning for a government shutdown, and probably that should be respected.
The gap between the opening Democratic bid and the cuts already approved by the new House majority illustrated the difficulty the two parties faced in reaching a compromise before the March 18 expiration of a two-week budget bill even with more participation by the White House.
I like Harkin’s idea. Let them shut it down and then hold a budget summit and Obama’s position should be we solve the deficit “problem” with 1/3 cuts from mandatory spending, 1/3 cuts from discretionary and 1/3 from revenue. Sort of insane that wasn’t Obama’s position from the start.
Hold the meeting at the white house and then have the camera pan on the empty chairs of the GOP representatives.
Shut it down, call their bluff & let America know what the pain is caused by who. Democrats do not want to risk unemployment progress due to GOP’s plan. Simple and Effective.
Dems will roll over and cave. I wish it were not the case but national dems rarely never stand up for anything when it matters.