Senators seek to stop shutdowns forever, after McCarthy’s spending stumbles | Hacker News Reader

Senators seek to stop shutdowns forever, after McCarthy’s spending stumbles

politico.com

Good luck with that.

The Constitution explicitly says that revenue bills must originate in the House.

There's no way the current House is going to approve anything like this, which these Senators know perfectly well. Probably no House would -- the House and Senate are extremely jealous of their prerogatives, and always have been.

It's basically just posturing for the cameras, the same way that both parties do any time there's a "government shutdown" in play. Nothing truly essential ever gets "shut down", but the politicians get to blather for a TV audience. Then when the "shutdown" is over over, all the government employees who were furloughed wind up getting paid anyway...in effect, having received a bonus paid vacation.

The amazing thing is that the public keeps falling for this financial theatre, time and time again.

FYI, the government didn’t shutdown when there was a funding gap until the 80s.

That's just more evidence that it's a political ploy rather than a constitutional requirement.

House and Senate being jealous of their prerogatives is kind of a myth. The US Congress has punted on declaring war, for example. We've had plenty of wars since 1941 without such a declaration.

Something seems funny to me about this bill. The article seems to state:

> the legislation has more Republican co-sponsors than Democratic backers at the moment, raising questions about just how many Democrats might sign on.

And I can't for the life of me think why Democrats wouldn't sign on to this bill unless it doesn't do what it says it does (prevent gov't shutdowns)?

The best I can think of is that the terms of it must not be favorable in the interim? So Republicans would be less incentivized to get some spending bills through? (Nothing so permanent as a temporary fix that works). In which case this would risk hamstringing Congress' ability to just pass laws.

It's hard to imagine that being worse than congress' own ability to hamstring itself, but I guess we might see.

Two things:

1. From a policy standpoint, limping the government along in two week increments is a bad way to run a government. You can't start or stop programs when the budget is "do more of the same". And if the bill contains some kind of provision for only doing "essential" programs, that can be used to shut down large swaths of the government indefinitely.

2. From a political standpoint, there's a saying: "never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake". Government shutdowns are popular with certain Republicans, but it's widely seen as irresponsible. Republican leadership doesn't want a shutdown, but they are stuck an anti-government wing of their own party. (The alternative is to ignore them and work with Democrats, but the anti-government wing has threatened to remove the House Speaker if they do.)

So Democrats are not particularly incentivized to help out the House Republicans. Even if it were good for the country (see #1) it reinforces the internal politics of the Republican party that treats Democrats literally as enemies of the state. They don't want to be seen as giving in to threats.

Democrats may end up signing on to the bill anyway. They're just not co-sponsoring it, which would limit their ability to frame the bill in a way that suits their priorities.

Having worked for a company that worked directly with the government, these shutdowns are such a frustrating waste of man hours. They’re also demoralizing to people working on projects that are suddenly unfunded. Stopping shutdowns would be a huge step in the right direction.

Won't happen. The die-hard Republicans won't ever let go of their ability to kneecap a Democrat government when they feel like it.

There are Democrats on board, the bill can pass without them.

Also AFAICT the bill still has a kneecap strategy. If a funding deadline is missed, Congress must focus solely on spending bills. IOW it shuts down Congress, not the entire government. Sounds right to me.

If Congress were forced to forwgo pay and perks during shutdowns, there would be fewer of them

Probably not. Most of Congress is rich. They're not going hungry if they stop getting paychecks.

They're more concerned with keeping their jobs in the first place. For a large number of Republicans, that means shutting down the government as much as possible. It's explicitly what their constituents want them to do.

Those aren't a majority, but the remaining Republicans are reluctant to work with Democrats to get majority support. Much of the Republican platform consists of denying Democratic priorities, and collaborating with Democrats could cost them their job in the next primary. Primaries begin in just a few months.

More than the paycheck, the lose the ability to run the country if they lose their jobs. You don't get into politics for a job that pays little more than a recent college grad in Silicon Valley. You get into it so that you get to run the country your way.

Now, if you told them that they could not be a candidate for office while any part of the government was shut down, that might move some action. But then, many of them would be perfectly happy to sacrifice their own jobs if it would get some other people out of office.

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