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| For a fill list of the 35 Republicans who voted against the Trump-favored CR bill, follow this link. |
Also, I am amazed at the ignorance of so many in discussing this issue. I saw one to the chicks on The View rail against this "omnibus spending bill." I had to turn it off. This is not that. What is before congress is a continuing resolution to keep the government running for a short time. If one does not know what they are talking about, one shouldn't be so indignant and outraged in expressing one's view. Also, there were others who I watched who were opinionated but equally uninformed or were purposely misleading. And it wasn't one-sided. The Fox News host totally avoided explaining how we got to this point. He pointed out how bad the CR was, but did not explain how we got such a bad deal.
These are facts that are hard to dispute. Republicans have a majority. If Republicans would stick together, they could pass a clean continuing resolution without Democrat support. By "clean" I mean not loaded down with a lot of new spending and policy stuff. However, there are about a dozen to fifteen Republicans who will not vote for any continuing resolution. They also will never vote to raise the debt limit. They want to return to regular order and pass appropriation bills on time the way it supposed to be done, and they oppose increased deficits. One could say they are principled. However, they are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. These dozen to fifteen members as a group, call themselves the "Freedom Caucus."
So, since the speaker cannot count on all of his members to stick together and since he only has a seven-vote margin, he must get Dems to support the bill in sufficient number to make up for the Republicans he cannot get to support the bill. That comes with a price. The Dems want something for their support, so they load the bill with wasteful spending bobbles like a pay hike for members of Congress. The reason the bill was not a clean CR is because the leader had no choice but to deal with Democrats. Nancy Pelosi never had this problem. Getting Republicans on the same page is like herding cats.
The first CR was a bad bill and was derailed by Elon Musk who said of those voting for the bill, "Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried." Well, that is dumb. The people who should be primaried are the 15 or so Republicans who left leadership with no choice but to negotiate with Democrats.
Musk and Trump further complicated matters by insisting that there be a provision in the bill to raise the debt limit now. I am Okay with that really, as it is going to be raised later anyway. However, this complicated the process because the Freedom Caucus oppose increasing the debt limit.
When a second CR was presented without all of the Dems wasteful spending in it but with the extended debt limit (the bill Trump wanted) it failed 174-235. Included in voting against the Trump supported version of the CR were 35 Republicans! To make it even weirder, the Republicans who voted against Trump's wishes are the most Trumpy of Republicans. This is nuts!
I don't know how this will play out. It looks like we will have a shut down and more than that it looks like the new congress will come in with a weakened speaker who will lose his job. Crazy! Maybe Trump and Musk can pull this off. Maybe, behind the scenes, Trump, Musk, and JD are working to get the Freedom Caucus to get in line. I hope so. I will be impressed if we avoid a shutdown, then on the other hand, maybe Trump and Musk want a shutdown. None of this makes any sense. I think it signifies the chaos we will see for the next four years.
Republicans are going to prove they can't govern, and Trump hasn't even taken office. Maybe, they don't want to govern. Maybe they want chaos.
Guess which of our Tennessee delegation voted against the Trump-favored CR?
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