Democrats in Washington have softened their early opposition to the Republicans’ tiered approach to government spending, signaling a new openness to supporting the House GOP bill and averting a government shutdown at week’s end.
In a Monday letter to House Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his top deputies suggested that Democrats may support the Republicans’ short-term funding bill to keep the government open into early next year — a sharp change of tone that could pave the way for easy passage when the bill hits the chamber floor on Tuesday.
Joined by Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Jeffries stopped short of saying party leaders are ready to endorse the GOP proposal, known as a continuing resolution (CR), which was introduced by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over the weekend.
But he also didn’t rule it out.
Democratic support will be crucial, because a number of conservative Republicans are already vowing to oppose the measure to protest the absence of sharp spending cuts — a number large enough to sink the bill without help from across the aisle.
Some of the proposals include:
- Making discrimination based on abortion care from a company legal
- Removal of funds from the IRS, which help reduce the deficit.
- Removal of FBI funds
- Medicare spending cuts
- Funding for Israel
Things that are not included on that list:
- Reducing gas prices
- Reducing food prices
- Reducing housing prices
- Reducing student debt
- Global warming protections
Just in case anyone was wondering if the Republican party is trying to help the American people.
House Freedom Caucus came out against funding the government without cuts, so Democrats are needed to pass the CR.
Now the question is whether the Freedom Caucus will lose out on their other demand of the laddered CR.
So sad too bad. If they had just left them to rot on this, then the Shutdown would be the Republicans fault.
But now they’ve played them. They will change the bill to be unacceptable to Democrats after this statement. And naturally the Democrats will deny it, and the Republicans will cry wolf and point and scream. And publicly it will appear as though it is all the Democrat’s fault.
Next year is an election year. The Republicans know this. They will kick up and hoard as much dirt on Democrats as they possibly can.
It’s pretty easy to explain to voters that the Democrats are on board for a CR with no cuts, despite the laddered structure, and if the bill is changed after that then they might not be on board for whatever change.
No swing voter is going to be fooled by the actions described in your middle paragraph, which is why it won’t happen.
And your last point…of course Republicans will TRY to make Democrats take tough votes, but funding the government 100% IS the popular position. Republicans changing things to push the bill further right makes it a difficult vote for Republicans.
They are kicking the can down the road. Sections of the government will shut down in January with the rest in February.
