This is Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) on the pending shutdown of the government next week.
“My brain’s falling out of my head,” he said in an interview with Politico. ”When you talk about the Freedom Caucus talking about passing a CR [Continuing Resolution] and the Democrats saying, ‘I’m going to shut down the government.’ I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
Indeed, that weirdness should prove to partisans of both sides that there's as much honor and integrity in most members of Congress as you find in a group of alley cats.
And the alley cats don't make half as much noise.
Donald Trump says he's had it with the Democrats. After scheduling a meeting with the opposition to try to hammer out something short-term to avoid a shutdown, Democrats presented a list of demands guaranteed to force Trump to accept the unacceptable or kick them out of the room.
Guess which door Trump chose.
The situation today is reminiscent of the 2012 shutdown theater, when the GOP sought to repeal Obamacare and tied their support for government funding to gutting the law.
It didn't work, and after 17 days, the Republicans backed down.
Now Democrats will shut down the government. It's the same thing, right? Not according to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“What’s different? They were taking something away,” he told reporters. “We’re trying to restore something that they took away. It’s a world of difference when you’re trying to do some good for people rather than doing negative stuff for people.”
I never would have guessed.
It’s not just Democrats who have had to confront a tactical 180 in the current fight. Facing grumbling from the right flank of his conference, Speaker Mike Johnson vowed last year to never pass another continuing resolution to fund the government. On Friday, he muscled through the second GOP-backed stopgap of 2025.
One House Republican described a closed-door conference meeting last week like being in “The Twilight Zone,” as several hard-liners who once opposed continuing resolutions as preludes to bloated, opaque omnibus spending bills voiced support for a short-term punt.
Among those who spoke up was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former House Freedom Caucus chair, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the hard-right group who used to push for shutdowns but now urged his colleagues to “send Chuck Schumer a clean CR.”
Politics not only creates strange bedfellows, but it also creates alternate realities where Democrats are Republicans and Republicans are Democrats. It's the "Many Worlds Interpretation" of quantum mechanics, where "all possible outcomes occur, but in separate, non-communicating worlds, with each observer only experiencing the one outcome in their own world."
Trump also decided to cancel a meeting he had scheduled for Thursday with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. This enraged Schumer, who held a press conference on the front lawn of his Brooklyn home.
“Donald Trump can’t even negotiate a budget bill with Democrats. This great negotiator,” Schumer told reporters. “By refusing to even sit down with Democrats, Donald Trump is causing the shutdown. This is a Trump shutdown.”
Nice try, Chucky, but Republicans have already passed a "clean" CR in the House. All the Senate has to do is pass it in order to fund the government for another seven weeks. The Democrats could always try to shut down the government in November when the proposed CR expires. But unless the Republican spending hawks refuse to go along with another CR, Schumer will be facing the same situation he faces today.
The most significant sticking point for Democrats is re-upping the Obamacare subsidies for individual health insurance. Many Republicans have indicated that they might be open to some kind of compromise on the issue when it's negotiated during the seven-week CR.
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