Okay, folks—we have ourselves some shutdown theater going on from Congressional Democrats. We were on the verge of a government shutdown last week. On December 8, at midnight, the government was set to run out of money. A two-week continuing resolution was introduced and passed. While 14 Democrats did vote for it in the House and Senate Minority Leader helped it cruise to passage in the Senate with an 81-14 vote, the Left is hitting the brakes on more CRs. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said he and Sen. Schumer have signaled that they’re not going to pass another temporary spending bill, even if its clean. House Democrats didn’t lift a finger to help Republicans pass it, though they knew they had the votes. Republicans were really not happy about the two-week CR either, though the conservative wing conceded it had enough votes to pass. It was either this or an epic logrolling session in the future. It was the lesser of two evils.
Hoyer seemed confident that Republicans don’t have the votes to continue this, which is why he and Schumer are reportedly putting their foot down, forcing the GOP to act on bills that have been stalled. Roll Call has more:
Democrats will not support another clean continuing resolution that would allow Republicans to continue shirking their governing responsibilities, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday.
The Maryland Democrat named several “must pass” bills Republicans have yet to get through Congress, including reauthorizations of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the National Flood Insurance Program, as well as the next disaster supplemental and legislation providing a path to legal status for immigrants brought illegally into the country as children.
“There’s no more time to get these things done,” Hoyer said.
Republicans “are not going to bludgeon us into ignoring issues just because they ignore issues,” he said. “And they think they have the votes. We’ll see.”
[…]
Senate Democrats helped get that CR through their chamber, but Hoyer said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer has said they won’t support another stopgap measure.
It seems Democrats want to shut down the government, though don’t tell Sen. Bernie Sanders that; he flipped outon CBS after they called him out on his hypocrisy over the government shutdowns. He was one of a handful of Democrats who said prior to the spending bill’s passage that they wouldn’t support any measure that didn’t have a permanent DACA fix.
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