Republicans will need Democrats’ help to pass funding bill by 14 March as hard-right lawmakers push to cut costs

With the US federal government expected to shut down in one month unless Congress approves a funding bill, Democratic lawmakers are wrestling with just how far they are willing to go to push back against Donald Trump’s radical rightwing agenda that has thrown American politics into turmoil.

Specifically, Democrats appear divided on the question of whether they would be willing to endure a shutdown to demonstrate their outrage over the president’s attempted overhaul of the federal government.

“There’s no reasonable funding bill that could make its way through the Senate that wouldn’t cause uproar in the Republican party on the House side,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. “That is the fault of the Republicans in the House, not anybody else. But because of that, it is something that is giving Democrats in the House leverage.”

  • garretble@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    7 days ago

    They won’t shut down anything and then say, “See? We work across the aisle!”

    No one will remember or care. And in two years they’ll lose more ground, and we’ll have another 100 think pieces on “What the Democrats Did Wrong.”

    I’m not saying shutting down the government is the answer that’ll solve all the problems. But as better people have said: the democrats are over here looking in the rule book to see if a dog can play basketball while the republicans are dunking over and over.

    They have to figure out a better way to combat a group actively tearing down the government illegally. I don’t know what that is. But also I wasn’t elected to find out. They were. So they need to figure it out.