Our 2014 elections have assured me that our Republican leaders in Congress will learn to govern any time now. I mean, what could possibly go wr…OH WAIT.
The Hill reports this morning that another “tense standoff,” one similar to the chaos that erupted around Department of Homeland Security funding, is likely to unfold around the need to replenish the Highway Trust Fund, which is set to run low on funding this spring. Business groups — and the Obama administration — are warning of disaster if funding for ongoing infrastructure projects evaporates, while conservative groups are insisting Republicans agree to devolve infrastructure back to the states. Yet John Boehner is already on record saying he wants to replenish infrastructure funding. He just hasn’t said how it should be paid for. Sound familiar?
In the case of infrastructure, it should be noted that the failure is bipartisan: Democrats have also been far too reluctant to support the obvious solution, i.e., a hike in the gas tax.
But then there’s the debt ceiling, where the culpability for any crisis will be a lot clearer: It will lie with Republicans who oppose a clean debt limit hike. The Treasury Department is warning that we are close to hitting the debt limit, and is asking Congress rather laughably to “address this mater without controversy or brinksmanship.” Mitch McConnell recently pledgedthat Republicans will not allow us to “default on the national debt, but in the very next breath, he added that he hoped a debt ceiling hike “might carry some other important legislation that we can agree on in connection with it,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
GOP leaders may fully intend to fund infrastructure and avoid default. But the battle over Homeland Security funding is a reminder: Even when they know exactly how these standoffs will end — with the stiff-arming of conservatives and the moving of must-pass legislation with the help of Democrats — they will postpone the inevitable for as long as possible, in an always-futile effort to persuade conservatives that they fought the good fight to the bitter end. Which suggests that the best case scenario is that ultimately, further crises will be avoided, but only after more bouts of messy, protracted, and (in the case of the debt ceiling in particular) destructive drama.
We are all thralls to the 18% of America who voted to keep the GOP in charge of Congress. The default mode of our country is hopelessly, stupidly broken, because MURICA.
JPL
The solution is to have them pack their bags and go join Putin.
Tree With Water
Voters are going to grow tired very quickly of republican brinksmanship. November of next year will see them swept from congress, and the democratic nominee again elected to the presidency.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: Whereever it is he might be.
I do feel some sympathy with those who are unfortunate enough to be living in that place.
Bobby B
Don’t recall, reload! Who said that? Cicero? Meanwhile, here’s a sample of “right-thinking” America’s view of MSM, where NB-fucking-C! is considered to be liberal:
https://ricochet.com/righting-the-ship-at-nbc/
kindness
Maybe Democrats could slip High Speed Rail funding into the Transportation bill like Repubs like to slip in anti-abortion language into everything.
c u n d gulag
‘A mental institution divided against itself, cannot stand!’
This country has gone KKKrazy due to KKKrazy KKKonservatives!!!
Now, having said that, not every conservative/Republican is a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, a homophobe, and/or an intolerant Christian douche-canoe.
But, every racist, misogynist, xenophobe, homophobe, and/or intolerant Christian douche-canoe, is a conservative/Republican!!!
Mike J
I like how WaPo blames Democrats, who don’t have control of either house, for not introducing an incredibly unpopular tax that the Republicans will run commercials about for the next 20 years.
Which isn’t to say that the gas tax shouldn’t go up. I just see no reason for Dems to slit their own throats on something the Republicans will never pass.
Villago Delenda Est
@c u n d gulag:
/John Stuart Mill
I see what you did there!
greennotGreen
And to the 63.6% of voters who couldn’t be troubled to get up off their butts to stop them.
Amir Khalid
@Tree With Water:
Given the tendency, often noted here, to blame all the clowns in Congress except the ones you voted for, maybe one shouldn’t be too optimistic about that.
boatboy_srq
@Tree With Water: Funny, I have nightmares that the [s]electorate will decide to give the WH and a supermajority to the GOTea because “only Republicans can get things done.”
RaflW
We also have the GOP Senate f*#king up the bipartisan Anti-Trafficking bill by inserting an anti-abortion provision in the markup. The House, which usually specializes in this shit, passed a clean bill, but The Turtle is presiding over a huge meltdown that threatens to scuttle what should have been a rare slam-dunk.
Total legislating idiots. Useless maroons. Hopeless fools on yet another errand of panic.
So, yeah, they are indeed proving their ability to legislate: its a big fat zero.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: I am in the fortunate position of having a representative who cannot be blamed for any of this shit…a guy who lives and breathes infrastructure as the key to economic growth, because he’s actually seen that sort of thing work.
Rep. DeFazio, keep up the good fight!
tam1MI
@boatboy_srq: Well, their performance so far should set your mind on ease on that score.
Villago Delenda Est
@greennotGreen:
Alas, this is all too true.
What is even more frightening is that in my state we exceeded that number voting in the 2014 midterms, but that was a LOW number for us. Pathetic, disgraceful.
Face
It’s what they do. It’s how they act. It’s who they are.
Mike R
The republican party has gone crazy and most people are too busy watching the latest cat video on their phone to notice. We are riding in car driven by our nearly blind crazy uncle, this will not end well. Preaching to the choir here, but we really need an objective media and not stenographers. We need a lot more people to realize that things are only going to get much, much worse if the conservative wave doesn’t break soon.
BGinCHI
At this point, the Dems should just let the GOP tank the fucking thing and go after the media while they are doing it.
It’s time to make even the stupid people own what these fuckers are doing.
Could even the beltway media understand that they are trying to wreck government?
boatboy_srq
@tam1MI: If you mean the antics of the GOTea, the MSM has that covered with BSDI BS. If you mean the electoral habits of the typical low-information voter,… well,…
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
The Villagers DO NOT CARE. They’ve got their 6-7 figure incomes, their cocktail weenies, their tiger shrimp. They’re sitting pretty.
As my NCOs used to say, it will take a major emotional event to trigger a change from their current complacency.
NotMax
More perfect unionin’ is hard!
Zinsky
@greennotGreen: Amen, brother. If 90+% of eligible voters would just go stinking vote, Republicans wouldn’t win another election. They are a cult, not a political party.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: How about no infrastructure spending in DC for 5 years.
Or kicks in the crotchular region.
You decide.
NCSteve
@greennotGreen: I can’t blame the 19% voted for and got the government they wanted and certainly not the 18% who voted against them. Nope, got to blame the ass-sitters.
SFAW
@Tree With Water:
What is it today for you: alcohol, grass, acid, coke? Because the scenario you describe is about as likely as all my hair growing back, or Dick Cheney turning not-evil.
SFAW
@BGinCHI:
Does it have to be either/or?
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Or, they have a case of the ass like a Russian Bear!
sharl
I hope Dems nationwide learn the lesson of Maryland: to not take your traditional constituency for granted by assuming that the history of hostility to them from the GOP will be sufficient to drive them into your arms on election day:
Yeah I got problems with the thinking of those students. And yeah, I don’t trust Rand any farther than I could throw him. But I have a REAL problem with Anthony Brown and his advisers for failing Politics 101, especially since Bob Ehrlich’s election in 2002 wasn’t THAT long ago, and happened for very similar reasons.
Turgidson
@boatboy_srq:
I think that was their plan last fall when they were about to win the midterms. Set themselves up for the presidential election by passing a raft of (uniformly atrocious) legislation they knew Obama would veto. Then get in front of the voters and say “see? We’re doing stuff (never mind it’s all giveaways to plutocrats, heinously socially-regressive, etc. etc. It’s STUFF), but that Kenyan Usurper Obama is stopping us from doing the people’s work with his tyranny. The only way out of this is to give us a president who will work with us.”
They, astonishingly, did not seem to realize that there were sizable rumps of their own caucuses that would throw hissy fits about pretty much everything and make the party look like total fucking clowns every time a must-pass bill came onto the schedule.
The silver lining of the shitshow fail parade we’re all suffering through is that it takes this pitch, however disingenuous it would have been, away from them next fall. They look like assholes to pretty much everyone outside the 27%. Even the useless media is aghast at the Iran letter.
Citizen Alan
@greennotGreen:
This facile smugness over mid-term elections is starting to grate. The vast majority of Americans live in gerrymandered districts where there is no real choice at all and far too many live in districts the Democrats have flat-out abandoned. I was given a choice for Senator between senile Thad Cochran and blue dog Travis Childers. Worse, I was given a choice for Representative between Alan Nunnelee (who didn’t even campaign because he was busy dying of brain cancer) and the Democratic nominee who caused a scandal by falsely claiming to have been a Green Beret (the truth, and I am not making this up, is that he worked as a “food specialist” and wore a green beret while serving soldiers in the cafeteria). Now I voted a straight Dem ticket, but it’s getting a little old listening to complaints about all the people who stayed home when the Democratic Party sends out wave after wave of useless scrubs who get slaughtered in general elections because NO ONE takes them seriously.
Waynski
@BGinCHI: @Villago Delenda Est: How about no infrastructure spending in DC for 5 years.
Or kicks in the crotchular region.
Can we vote for both?
Chris
Having let the Joker off the leash, the mob bosses are now having second thoughts?
Waynski
@sharl:
Quoteth Woody Allen, “90% of life is just showing up”
gene108
@sharl:
Problem with Democrats is they do not clearly stand for anything. It is easy for the opposition to paint them with a broad brush.
BGinCHI
@Waynski: Judges indicate yes.
Belafon
@Citizen Alan: A lot of gerrymandered districts would fall if Democrats turned out in midterms, since they are thin Republican majorities. You can’t argue that Democrats didn’t turn out, because the numbers show they didn’t.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: Did the NCO phrase it just that way?
srv
The Highway Trust Fund is just another mechanism for welfare red states to suck money out of blue states.
Let Alabama pay for their own potholes.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Villago Delenda Est:
This this this this this.
Most of our problems would go away if we could get the average turnout above 60% (negating the power of the fringe on both sides), but enough people have swallowed the “GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM” Kool-Aid that they’d rather not bother.
Reagan’s ultimate legacy will be the US abandoning all pretense of being a democratic republic and turning into a full-fledged plutocracy, and the “shining city on the hill” will be a tiny gated community for the 0.01%. With armed guards on watchtowers to keep the riff-raff out. ‘Cause that’s what Jesus would do, yo.
No, I’m not bitter or cynical at all.
low-tech cyclist
Mind if I say I’ve been hearing the “we need a better electorate” argument from liberals since the 1970s, and I’m sick and tired of it?
The Dems abandoned the 50-state strategy that worked for them in 2006 and 2008, resulting in too many uncontested or poorly contested districts in races since then. They lack the courage of their convictions, with too damn many of them running away from Obama as well as Obamacare. And then we blame the voters, rather than blaming the Democratic Party.
Fuck that. The electorate is what it is. How about if we figure out how to change the Democratic Party into something a little more worthwhile?
Turgidson
@Citizen Alan:
It seems like the only way the Democrats can compete in places like Mississippi is when there is a GOP president making such a historic mess of things that even the GOP’s voters, for once, lose their motivation to vote – or when the GOP president suggests out of nowhere that he’s going to privatize Social Security immediately after an election in which it was never mentioned, driving some blue hairs into the Dems’ arms temporarily.
And even then, all we really succeeded in doing was electing a handful of Blue Dogs to the House, who were toast the moment the winds shifted and were frequently a pain in the ass for party leadership to keep in line. That certainly beats the alternative, but it’s not the foundation of a durable majority.
The Democrats probably won’t focus on the deep south until they fix the gerrymanders the GOP installed into swing and light-blue states after the 2010 census. So not until after 2020 when, hopefully, presidential turnout brings some of those states back into the fold.
(of course, Hillary will be running for a fourth consecutive Democratic term by then, and who the hell knows how the electorate will feel about that. might just vote her out for shits and giggles, knowing this country’s voters)
Peale
Should I really care if the infrastructure goes down the tubes? Is there any reason why we need to have it? I think the best path forward is offered by the Republicans on this issue. A few prosperous areas can afford to have good roads and bridges and water treatment. Why bother with the rest? A lot of countries around the world have opted for that model. Yeah, I know a lot of places like that end up with armed separatists burning schools and stuff, but you can’t have everything. I think goods and people travel too freely anyway.
Citizen Alan
@Belafon:
Yes but it’s irrational to expect Dems to show up if you give the m literally NOTHING to vote for. I reiterate, the Dem opponent to Alan Nunnelee was someone with NO prior political experience who lied about his military record. The opponent tapped to run against Roger Wicker in 2012 was an 81-year-old WW2 vet (also with no prior political experience). And since the special election was called after Nunnelee’s death, NINE Republicans have officially declared and NO Democrats. Democrats are ecstatic because a woman named Vicki Slater who, so far, doesn’t seem crooked, crazy or delusional, has declared to run against our horribly unpopular governor even though her one-page website doesn’t discuss any issues and basically says “Phil Bryant sucks” over and over again.
low-tech cyclist
Oh yeah: Obama should just mint the damn trillion-dollar platinum coin, and dare the GOP to start a fight over it.
It might be legal, or it might not. But the litigation wouldn’t be resolved until sometime in 2016, which would be the best time in the world to hold the GOP’s feet to the fire on the debt limit.
Zandar
@low-tech cyclist:
No.
Fuck that.
You know what? Your vote is a binary choice. You either get the GOP or you get the Dems. If we don’t start giving a shit enough to elect the Dems, then we’ll get the GOP, period.
Republicans are bad enough that wanting to keep them out of office should be good enough to get your goddamn ass out there to vote in every election. If that’s not good enough for you, then we all get to burn together.
As some point you as a voter have to decide you give a shit enough to actually vote.
lou
Off topic, except that it involves a Republican state legislator who should resign ASAP. This guy and his wife adopted two girls who had weathered sexual abuse and other problems, despite warnings from Arkansas DHS, the foster parents and other experts that they weren’t prepared to deal with the girls’ issues. In fact, when DHS dragged its feet in allowing him to adopt, he threatened their budget.
And guess what, the girls misbehaved. They had emotional problems. So the couple “rehomed” them and then tragedy struck.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
We had record turnout in my state. Apparently we just have more assholes now.
Gin & Tonic
@Zandar: But you can’t beat somebody with nobody. In 2014 less than 60% of the 5,800 seats available in the state legislatures had more than one candidate. That’s the highest percentage in history.
sharl
@lou: What an awful story. Wonkette picked up the Arkansas Times account and has quite commendably been all over it. [They do this regularly, and I don’t know how they and others like them dig into such horrible stories so regularly without developing “psychic burnout”. May the FSM bless them for doing it though.]
In the course of their background research, the Editrix over at Wonkette found a 5-part Reuters series published in 2013 titled The Child Exchange which dives into the whole grim business that includes “rehoming” (and what an adorable euphemism THAT is!). The author was Megan Twohey, and her series made enough of an impact that she was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families in 2014 (.pdf, 4pp).
Sadly, like so many other domestic issues, I don’t think anything usually happens in the area of family welfare reform until there are enough Justin Harris-type horror stories to reach some kind of critical mass. What a damn shame that is.
Zandar
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, that is 100% true.
We need participation in wanting be be in local and state government, as well as in voting for it.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: in states with one really dominant legislative party
Any in particular come to mind? :)
Interesting thing about that W&M study, though, is that four of the five sates with the most contested races are all northern, some dominated by one party in all districts and some more balanced. Those four also all have names that start with “M”, too.
Bobby Thomson
@RaflW: they’re doing what they want to do. You think they actually care about trafficking?
Mike in NC
By the time the GOP wrecking crew is done with their voter suppression efforts, only 18% will be ELIGIBLE to vote.
ruemara
@Citizen Alan: too bad. Because the non-voters are still the biggest problem.
lou
@sharl: Thanks. I read that series when it came out two years ago. It was horrifying. And this guy’s abuse of power is just the dynamite on top of the powder keg. Good “Christian,” indeed.
SFAW
@Zandar:
Don’t try THAT shit over at C&L. I had the temerity to suggest that, and was told I’m an authoritarian because SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!
Granted, it wasn’t all the commenters there, just the ones who took ten paragraphs to spout the same off-topic shit over and over, without getting the points being made by yours truly.
Oh, and fear of what the Rethugs can/will do is not enough of a reason for some of those morons to vote Dem, because the Dems should give them a fucking reason to get their precious vote.
I swear, when I become God-Emperor of this burg, there’s gonna be changes.
SFAW
@efgoldman:
He can see for miles and miles and miles and miles …
Tree With Water
“Under the Bennet-Gardner bill, the Senate would be forced to take attendance roughly once an hour — every day — between 8 a.m. and midnight for as long as a shutdown continued…. If a majority of senators aren’t on hand for the attendance count, officially called a quorum call, then the remaining lawmakers have the power to seek the arrest of their missing colleagues, according to a preview of the measure [emphasis added]”.
That’s the second time in three days republican senators have referenced the arrest of sitting congressional members. With Graham, it was military arrest.
Again, and because I take them at their word, I do believe the bastards are setting themselves up for a fall.
RaflW
@Bobby Thomson: Actually, I do think a sufficient number of legislators from both parties do care about this issue. As I mentioned, the House, which is usually the more insane of the two GOP caucuses passed the bill w/o the abortion language.
I’ve seen legislation related to this get very effectively lobbied and passed in Minnesota by smart folks and I gather this was seen as a pretty rare but real chance for bipartisan agreement.
But then the anti-abortion base had to get their licks in and ruin the deal. Not at all untypical, but further evidence that the GOP just flat out sucks at actually closing any deals.
grandpa john
@Zandar: Yep, I live in SC and I vote a straight democratic ticket, Is my vote wasted? presently it probably could be considered as yes but I still make an effort to go vote.
Also some of our local elections are bipartisan and thus I need to go vote to participate in them. We also have early voting which means that I can drop by when I am out and vote,
SFAW
@Tree With Water:
Look, I believe you’re sincere and all that, but you’re not factoring in the low-information/insane/racist (or whatever) voters who elected them.
And, for what it’s worth, I include the nominal Dem voters who whine about the Dem candidate “But s/he hasn’t given me a GOOD REASON to vote for her/him!” in the “low information” group. Every time I read that type of comment from one of those assholes, I have to stifle the urge to quote Tbogg at them.
SFAW
@grandpa john:
Thank you! I hope someday it makes a difference.
agorabum
@Mike J: Yeah, show me all the Republicans clamoring to increase the gas tax, only to be thwarted by the Dems. Because that’s the only way you can say the Dems have been ‘reluctant’ to support the gas tax – if someone brings forth a bill, that has a chance of passing, and asks the Dems for their support.
They are open to all kinds of tax increases. It’s the Stupid Party that signs pledges to never raise taxes for nothing no how (even / especially for wars)
BruceFromOhio
Captain Kirk: We’re free people. We belong to no one.
Provider #2: Such spirit. I wager fifteen qualtoos that he is untrainable.
Provider #3: Twenty quatloos that all three are untrainable.
Provider #2: Five thousand quatloos that the newcomers will have to be destroyed.