Budget agreements won’t matter, funding obligations won’t matter, expended funds on the basis of promised reimbursement won’t matter. You really don’t get the impression the GOP is thinking through what this means for the second they’re not in control.
Seems more like what they are planning is to never be out of control again...
You don't think they expect to ever not be in control, do you? The big advantage of the authoritarian dictatorship that the GOP-controlled Congress, Supreme Court, and President support is that they are in a position to lock in their rule in perpetuity.
If they hold elections at all, they will gerrymander and vote suppress their way to permanent control.
Exactly.
What's the point of a budget that needs 60 votes to pass when 50 votes can pass a rescission of whatever the gop doesn't like?
Republicans know that the dems will take the "high road" just like they do with redistricting. Dems act as tenants, and the GOP acts as landlords.
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, insist the process is alive and well.” This should probably note that Susan Collins is either an incredibly stupid gullible idiot or a malicious liar. One of those things should be mentioned.
Those are unrealistic expectations of Sahil.
She can be both.
The Dems need a shadow government; what's the hold up?
The GOP in Congress does know what it's doing = the same thing the GOP in NC has been doing. Kneecap the incoming leadership through laws & court orders Trump does something clearly illegal - lawsuits follow w/ legal or illegal rulings New POTUS takes office - cant fire, tariff, etc.
I'm going to say the thing. Here I go. You're assuming they're planning to not be in control.
Lest we forget, the end goal of Project 2025 is to basically make it borderline impossible for anyone even a smidgen to the left to get control again.
It’s like none of you bothered to read what the Heritage Foundation’s goals were with Project 2025.
The GOP sees the Democrat’s track record and know they have nothing to fear.
Given the gerrymandering in Texas and the voter suppression at a stunning level, in addition to the fact the Senate will be controlled by 30% of the populace by 2040, they obviously ignore this by intending to never not be in control again.
I'm counting on "pride goeth before a fall" for them.
I think it's actually worse than them acting as if they'd never not be in control. They're creating a system where it won't matter if they're not in control, because there won't be anything left to do anything with. Everything will have been privatized, and the state drowning in debt.
Post this term, SCOTUS will likely be 8-1, maybe 7-2 and will make DAMN SURE that nothing can be done about this either. Any incoming administration can consider itself lucky if they have enough cash to run the IRS. If that.
They don't think they'll ever not be in control again.
Exactly this. Using power like this is their attempt at permanent control. They’ve already been saying for decades that Democrat control is illegitimate. This is an attempt to make that real.
Yup, it’s this. They are assuming they will never be out of power so there’s no chance that the left will ever regain lost ground let alone come out ahead. Everything they do either seems to assume that or - like all the shit they are up to with voting in the states - are to ensure it.
Thousand Year Reich-brain. Decade at the worst, and we've already had forty years of preamble. Of course we may all be destroyed by the process.
The Big Beautiful Bet is they'll get a cookie-cutter centrist establishment Democratic administration that will only partly undo what Trump did but also never punish the wrongdoers because that's literally what every Democrat administration has done since Clinton.
Even if you got your dreamland DSA administration, you will lose the Midterms because undoing Trumpism will mot be done overnight, the economy will suffer still, and the voters will try to "balance" like they always do.
THEY’RE NEVER GOING TO NOT BE IN CONTROL. THEY’RE NEVER LEAVING!
They are not immortal.
No, but they’re cheaters.
Oh Democrats. Always thinking 2 steps behind. Republicans never intend on giving up power. They’re busy rigging future elections while Dems whine about fairness. News flash: They’re not playing by the rules.
Hey gee, maybe you should consider that they have no intention of giving up control. They already did a trial run insurrection and now they have a army with the budget of a small country.
That's the whole point.They're acting like they're not leaving.
They’re not leaving. This is their American Revolution and the end goal is a white Christian apartheid state and sadly, they’re likely going to win.
They’re assuming they can set it up so they’ll never not be in control ever again
That’s what happens when you give the car keys to the reckless ones. They drive as fast as they can and walk away from the wreckage shrugging. There is NO LONG TERM PLAN.
They dont have any intentions of giving power back are you kidding
They are tying to get 100 years of reform done in the 4 years they might be in charge and are willing to burn any bridge to do it.
Trying to undo 100 years of progress.
…it’s almost as if they know they’ll never again NOT be in control
Obviously, they don't intend to not be in control.
They are rigging the election process so they are never ever out of power ever again. open your eyes man
The GOP doesn't plan on not ever being in control.
They're doing a fascist putsch. They don't ever plan on being out of power. The only way they plan on leaving power is at the end of a rope.
Democrats care about the less fortunate in red states and can’t do this if they are in charge. Those folks don’t vote Republican and likely are largely minorities.
I’m not so sure. It seems that they’ve assessed (correctly) that numbskull voters will not remember or care about what Repubs did if Dems are unable to completely fix all the harm created by Repubs while also materially improving their lives without any negative consequences in only one Prez term.
The standard is that Dems must expediently execute miracles with perfection and Repubs just have to be able to promise miracles despite a longstanding history of failing to deliver on those promises.
And Repubs know thy is so they act accordingly, doing whatever they want with the knowledge that voters will never hold it against them if they only promise the moon.
They’re not expecting not to be in control. They fully believe they’ve stacked election maps and SCOTUS in their favor for a generation. I don’t know that they’re wrong.
The problem is that (generally speaking) the Democrats want to fund the government and Republicans want to defund it. Recission is a unilateral tool that almost entirely benefits Republicans. The only way for Democrats to fight back is to abolish the filibuster.
With the exception of defence maybe?
…and then pack the courts followed by statehood for DC. That might give us the opportunity to unfuck some things.
DC, *Puerto Rico, and the rest of the US territories. FTFY
Leave the territories alone. You've done enough harm to them. Why don't you actually decolonize them and get rid of their colonial mentalities to allow them to actually evaluate their situation.
I intentionally excluded the territories for this reason. As far as I know, DC is the only non-state territory where the people have voted in favor of statehood. All the territories should be welcome to statehood, but it’s up to them to hold a vote on it.
What about Guam?
If Dems take Congress, it would help start the conversations/raise awareness if they pass a resolution inviting all territories to hold a referendum on statehood. Should also include some guidelines to maximize enfranchisement and prohibit outside money from influencing voters.
Yep. Everybody forgets about American Samoa, Guam, US Virgin Islands, & Northern Mariana Islands. Those four, plus PR, would be ten votes in the US Senate and represent, together, about 3.6 million US people, almost all citizens. Those four together would be ~30th in state population, betwn CT & UT.
Puerto Rico is ~3.2 million people, with the other four each representing 45k to 172k. They'd likely each get 1 seat in the House, unless a sudden outbreak of common sense takes place and we expand the House sometime soon beyond what it's been (stupidly) capped to for the last century.
FTR, I'm also in favor of DC statehood, but we were talking about Territories, and DC is a District. 😅🤓
To-may-to, to-mah-to. As a DC lifelong resident (except for 3 rather foggy years in NOLA) I am so sick of no voting rep. Thought of moving just to get the vote, but we need people to stay and fight for our rights
The real reason why the house doesn't expand it's count is because they would need to construct a brand new building. The cap was decided because the building was getting really cramped.
I dunno, the UK's Parliament figured it out. They have ~420 seats for 650+ MPs. Between caucuses, video meetings, & remote voting procedures we've already used during COVID, that's just not a compelling reason.🤷♂️ They don't want to expand the House because it might create too many more city districts
We also figure out how to cram an additional 100 seats for the US Senators, plus the SCOTUS, into the House Chambers during the SOTU Address, so I'm pretty sure they could figure it out.
Nah. Thats a common misconception. They can easily fit more People in the House. Just take a look at any SotU address. The real reason was because the two major parties wanted to prevent the rise of growing minor parties. 435 reps aren’t enough for 330m Americans. @uncapthehouse.bsky.social 🇺🇸
Increasing the House by a factor of 20 or more has been my pet issue for a long time. E.g.: bsky.app/profile/gepa... Lots of benefits, and the only downside is the cost of office space, which is manageable. Hell, if nothing else, 10,000 Reps would be a LOT more expensive to bribe, as well. 😂🇺🇸
Could easily change House rules to allow remote voting and speaking to keep the same building.
IF they recieve a MANDATE for those things. We're seeing what happens when a party does not have any such mandate but try to pretend that they do in order to force through an unpopular agenda anyway.
Fuck that. That is exactly the decorum that the GOP rejects and the old Dems accept, and that's why we keep getting our asses handed to us, after everything we have has been stolen. They need to take a page from the GOP and claim mandate, then do the hard things.
"It's okay when WE do it!"
No. We don't give aid and comfort to rapists, and we boot people who are proven corrupt. That isn't the same as using every legislative trick at your disposal. Nice try at both siding.
"It's okay when WE do it because WE turn it towards GOOD purposes!"
We should just have one party of good people who only do good things, and then just prevent other parties (bad people) from competing, and because our party is good, we won’t need any rules or even elections because we will only do good things. It’s astonishing no one ever thought of this before.
Oh, no, not a leap at all. Yes, a clear line between "Dems should use every legislative trick at their disposal" to complete anarchy. Absolutely.
You think complete anarchy doesn't often come about from the actions of people who are "using every trick at their disposal" for causes and pursuits they think are good and justified?
This is the sort of over-generalized, black/white thought trap that liberal politicians stumble over all the time. It’s Pelosi and Schumer saying “we need a healthy Republican Party,” when the GOP has been marching toward Christo-fascism for 40+ years.
It’s “good” to ensure people are fed and housed; it’s good to devote resources to reversing climate change. We owe nothing to a political party that only ever uses power to enrich themselves, punish unfavored groups, diminish quality of life for workers, and wreck our planet.
And, as you yourself show, the Democratic Party (primarily its activist base) has been marching toward anarcho-communism for that exact same period of time. Yet you just want to continue that march, since you have a childish, black and white way of thinking.
So yeah, it is okay when we do it.
lol…so… there’s a huge difference between building a government that’s designed to support the greater good (objectively) vs. wrecking everything, kicking people off their healthcare, letting people starve, wrecking the climate—all for a far-right ideology untethered from reality.
There is. But the hard part is getting the vast majority of the citizenry whose greater good that government must support to WANT that government over the other. We are where we are now because too much of us did NOT want that and chose to buy what the MAGA Party was claiming to sell them.
"The greater good...whether you like it or not." Commies gonna commie. 🙄
it's always wild to see people espouse things like "the only way to fight back is to [thing within the process that they can just handwave away with an illegal executive order that a corrupt court will gladly approve]" in a country with some of the highest gun ownership rates in the world
Anyone ever get the feeling that money is a fantasy game to these over rich morons to the point where they figure it will just never go away?
The thought process is we can use this to pass anything we want with a simple majority and if in the unlikely event we dont have control can still cry about the fillbuster and the Democrats will likely go along with it.
That's what we are counting on cause so much of what this travesty will be reversed before the ink is dry so I don't know why guys like Mike Johnson who know better are high diving. When they lose both houses of Congress, shit will change abruptly. Right now our job is to protect the election.
They don’t give a shit when they’re not in control! It’s what they’ve done every time they’re in control! Run up the debt grifting to corporations and the wealthy and blame it on democrats, and the minions believe it!
The 3 I’s: Ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility.
Republicans and the public have been trained by the media at large, that no matter what mess they make, Democrats will be blamed for it.
But, Susan Collins isn't concerned, so everything must be fine.
You assume they’ll ever again not be in control
This is happening thanks to 6 Supreme Court Justices that are enabling the Trump Administration's cruelty and lawlessness! John Roberts - Chief Justice Thomas Clarence Samuel Alito Brett Kavanaugh Neil Gorsuch Amy Coney Barrett www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
They've conditioned their base to blame everything on the opposition party, so what different does it make?
They are not thinking long term. They see a weakness and push to see how far they can go. They exercise as much power as they can when they have it and count on the Dems to constrain themselves with institutional norms when they're in power. So far, this strategy has been very successful, alas.
Nah, they are. They just know the Dems will look form norms restoration and will let them off the hook in name of bipartisanship and healing
Political expediency.
Dude bsky.app/profile/chri...
People don’t get how much the Courts are affected by this. As of 7/15 there is no money left to pay appointed fed defense attorneys-no funds until October. How can courts function and rights be protected if the lawyers aren’t paid? We can’t afford to take every case pro bono. Most of us are solos.
Trump does not care about government and does not care about the GOP. He has always been short sighted, impulsive and self centered. There is no 'plan'. In his first term this was masked by the GOP professionals that surrounded him. Now, nobody will tell him 'no' and this is what you get.
I'm a little leery of chortling about this because I think it will only matter of Democrats decide to make it matter. Real danger Schumer decides he wants to resurrect bipartisanship once Democrats regain the Senate. (Danger, not a guarantee! Which is why pressure from constituents matters.)
it’s guaranteed
1&2!!!😡
Because a budget process that’s just “Blue states get nothing while providing the overriding share of national revenues” is not only a violation of fair play, it’s massively and structurally destabilizing to the country.
they are planning on never being out of power again, they are literally openly planning on arresting/killing/deporting any decent. dems need a better plan than just "vote in the midterms"
We either get rid of them electorally, or we doing using other constitutional provisions. Exercising our rights to full effect, so to speak.
💯 we need full 50 million in the streets! People choosing to rise over choosing to go to their friend's house, or their game. There is sacrifice in everything.
It's Golden Parachute Logic. "I'll be gone by the time the bill comes due, so it's not my problem." They forget that they're doing this to the machine that makes the parachutes, and bails them out when their financial chicanery blows up in their face.
They're literally setting fire to their own safety net while they crack open the support pillars to rummage for copper they can pawn off.
Blue states should just stop funding the country. The citizens of blue states should stop paying federal income tax. Put it all in an covert escrow, maybe offshore somewhere the feds can't touch it. Then start making demands.
This probably doesn't scale, and exposes people to prosecution for tax evasion. But I agree a political system in which Blue America subsidizes Red America, which periodically rebels, causing massive social harm, is badly broken and calls the ongoing subsidies into question.
I don't think mass prosecution for tax evasion is doable, but since States collect your Fed taxes and then send them, putting that money in an escrow isn't evasion so much as leverage. Only liability would be to State leaders protecting the interest of *their* people. The Constitution is null now
yeah, spcl when they've gutted the IRS and mistreated every principled accountant willing to do government work so severely they'll never take a job under a Republican admin again. Who are they going to investigate it with? Who will they enforce it with??
The ICE goons aren't going to keep arresting people for free, neither will the military, and not enough of them anyway. There's only a few countries that *might* be willing to lend them money, the only likely one would be in the middle east and it wouldn't be sustainable.
The liability would be further punishment from the federal government. Perhaps a daily fine funds are withheld or massive interest owed. Not too hard to see where this would go imo
It's really more of a soft coup. They would fail miserably, there's no money for any of it. The blue states are the support of this country, mostly CA. I think the only red state not in the red, so to speak, is Texas. Then the dems take over and things get better. It's a tough love situation.
Is the OBBB (as opposed to the ÖBB) going to wind up giving tax cuts to a bunch of blue staters while reducing flows into red states?
I think you can just say Republicans aren’t “thinking” and leave it at that. It’s all emotional reaction. Some of it has been the stated goal for a long time but they haven’t thought moves down the line. They’re mad things changed. They want to go back. That’s it.
There isn't even a there to go back to. Their prelapsarian world never existed.
They are betting that the blue state Dems are a bunch of cowards who will never stand up to them. I hope they are wrong, but have seen nothing to fuel that hope.
The establishment Dems have worked very hard at not being taken seriously.
It's why red states have low taxes, because they get subsidies from the fed. It's all a scam.
The longer it goes on the more likely the backlash from blue states is ugly and brutal. Republicans are playing with fire and are endlessly fortunate that the Democratic party is full of spineless weasels. That can change.
This... after GOP spent 4yrs voting against the legislation Dems engineered to overwhelmingly benefit rural🇺🇸... (thats also more fiscally responsible & beneficial long-term) The dichotomy between the two parties in governance & adherence to law, in politics & in media coverage is astounding...
Its amazing that some people still dont realize, or refuse to see, what is happening. This is a smash and grab for the entire country. This is the end of all of that. There won't be meaningful elections again
It is a fiscal civil war
It really will come down to blue states withholding federal dollars if we are being required to subsidize an autocratic plutocracy. Why on earth would we send dollars we could use within our states if the federal govt witholds from us.
How would you have the states prevent the federal government from collecting personal income tax?
That is the conundrum. But it is something blue states should be exploring if the federal government is disadvantaging and worse, acting punitively toward them.
This is why blue states are doing this: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
So the west and NE coasts should resist, maybe form new allegiances and trade agreements, and not share their commerce, tax revenue, workforce, or patents.
We would lose the war that would inevitably lead to. I don't think that's the solution to this problem.
No, we wouldnt. Because they literally cant win. We have the money. We also have all the ports they need to get shit. So you devastate us, its just shooting yourself in the dick. And if seize us, you just lost your golden goose.
They have the entire US military and law enforcement and I'm sure right wing paramilitary groups would join them. These people don't care about fucking themselves over, they are fascists and all fascists are morons.
Uh huh. Can said fanatics produce what we produce? No. They gonna work the ports? No. Every avenue of force leads nowhere. They take over. Still gotta run it, and you cant enslave creativity. You can make it captive, but you cant replicate the output freedom allows for in a zoo
They don't think any of that is true and they believe that California is economically harming them. You need to remember that these people are divorced from reality and incredibly cruel. They don't care. They don't even know that they should.
Barbarians at the gate. Got it. You needn't say more. You have already proven the uselessness of what you could offer.
and, maybe unsurprisingly, it’s very much straight out of the socialist redistribution of resources playbook they claim to be morally opposed to
Yup, it’s taxation without representation, a thing our entire political system was ostensibly designed to prevent.
I believe this. CA & NY could threaten blockade of Federal taxes collected in their states. A real tea party. TX & FL would immediately object to picking up the tab for “Red” free-loader states. They love their Blue-state supported welfare. #NoTaxationWithoutRepresentation #CREAM
How? Taxes are garnished from your wages and sent directly to the federal government. It's not like the money funnels into Sacremento or Albany and they write a check to the government. You would need every business, small to large, to agree to not garnish federal income tax, and even then that is
nearly impossible because most use a third party for their payroll management and the flow of taxes is baked into the platforms. The only thing a state can do is withhold state employee federal taxes but in a place like NY or CA, that amount compared to the rest of the federal tax is insiginificant.
It’s tough because the original rules are so embedded/locked in. BUT, you yourself recognize that a third party controls our garnishment, takes fed, state, local, SDI & health & 401k, if you cam afford it. That’s a mechanism that can be altered. With legal maneuvers?!
We’re at a point where the Federal Admin is run by a Convicted Felon, who illegally found a way to keep our taxes & not give our tax portion back! He broke the rules by which we operated. While the lawsuits play out to get that money back, we should figure a way to starve this beast in DC!
States aren't mechanically able to blockade federal tax collection; it doesn't involve any state actors.
You structure your state taxes to be federally deductible, and increase them to make up for the services you aren't getting.
Payroll instead of income taxes, for example.
literally not possible without a ton of intermediate steps that are also very difficult. To the extent it is possible, it has already been done (see voluntary pass thru entity tax). it’s a nice idea, but does not put federal tax revenues in state control.
The state repeals their income tax, and starts a payroll tax. Payroll taxes are business expenses, and 100% deductible, unlike the cap on state tax deductibility for individuals. And so on. Is there really a limit to what a state could do with this more broadly?
That doesn't affect the requirement to do federal withholding on wages.
Yeah, zero impact on that. There are ways states can interfere with federal tax collection, and directly interfering with wage withholding probably isn't it.
Anyway step one would be “all payroll within the state has to go through a state depository institution, which then blocks outgoing funds to the federal government and seizes them into its own account.” Even laying the groundwork for such a depository would run into problems
And the federal response would simply be "it's nice that you paid the state some money, but that doesn't actually satisfy your federal withholding obligations, pay up or we seize your assets and charge you with tax evasion", so....
I’m not sure it would be at that specific point. The scale and problem of it would make that solution prohibitively difficult. But there is no “mandatory state depository institution for payroll,” nor could one readily be created, so the point is moot
The other interesting question is, even assuming you could mandate using a state depository institution for payroll, where does it keep the money? It can't be in anything touching a federally-regulated account, or else the feds can just yoink it from there....
I mean, in this decidedly-implausible world, it's not that hard to run a report against tax collection data, find out who's missing, and do some exemplary seizures and prosecutions.
You’re response is rational, of course… But right wingers propose irrational, extra-legal “solutions” all the time (c.f. “abortion finding”) and have all sorts of rules to show for it. Dems need more fight, more out-of-box thinking to starve the right wing beast.
Hmm, that's an interesting approach, though I don't think it'd work well in practice: SALT is only deductible above the standard deduction, so for most people this would be a straightforward state tax increase that wouldn't be offset federally.
For people with higher incomes, it's functionally equivalent to lending the state the additional money and getting it back later, so that might be unpopular for cash flow reasons, but it's at least average out in the end.
that assumes you can structure in that way, within the existing limits, and that those limits won't change in response. Ultimately state recourse is limited unless they're willing to combat federal attempts at enforcement… a new Nullification Crisis.
OTOH appropriation of federal accounts, property, and goods, while more confrontational upfront is less complicated and more targeted
Won’t stop them from trying: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
heh 😼 www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
They assume Democrats won't use the same power. Perhaps chuck Schumer won't, but he won't be in charge if/when Democrats take it back.
Unfortunately he will still be in charge and Democrats will continue to try to be "fair" and "bipartisan". Being as shitty as the GOP might not be a smart strategy anyway
Yep after this they will try and be the adults in the room and try and return things back to how they used to be and the Republicans will do this again next chance they get.
It is the literal only strategy left. I legitimately hope any Democratic politician trying for a return to norms and rules before MAGA is completely purged gets a [TOS Violation]
They don't have to be "as shitty" as the GOP. They merely have to wield actual power for once.
Its a better strategy than the current one of “take the high road and keep losing”
No more take the high road. NO MORE.
They take the high road and they trip and fall off of it and they hit every branch on the way down
This.
They believe that we are weak and helpless. That hubris will be their downfall.
It’s a safe assumption because they’re 100% correct. Democrats will continue to get kicked in the nuts while they drone on about decorum and taking the high road
The problem is that they likely have thought about what will happen if/when they aren't in power anymore. Dems have a very long history of showing that they don't have the backbone to go tit-for-tat and play by the same rules as the reps. They'll get into power & try to get back to "normal" ASAP.
The problem is the Democrats are a party of law and order, and they are not going to change that to stoop to the low ground that Republicans have. But what they can do is pass a bunch of laws to stop a lot of this from happening ever again.
They’re content wallowing in shit to blame it on Democrats and let the media broadcast their propaganda
You think the GOP would do all this shit if they thought there was even a chance of losing power??
They have thought it through. The GOP knows the Dems are too chicken shit to do *anything* about it if they take power back. They refuse to hold the GOP accountable.
Biden had 4 years to act on their attempted coup and just let them lie their way back to power.
Translation: the independent DOJ (which Biden didn't control) had 3.5 years, and Trump's legal team got SCOTUS to delay and delay until time ran out.
and you're wondering why the Gop feel they can do what they like?
The have no intention of letting go of control. They have a plan, much like the guy in the white house professed.