.. I wish we had heard a whole lot more of the Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate pointing out that this is not how things are done.
Sure, the Republicans managed to pass their deeply, deeply unpopular reconciliation bill, but they CANNOT IMPLEMENT IT WITHOUT DEMOCRATS. The "blueprint" they passed is effectively meaningless until it is implemented in a budget resolution that funds the government for the upcoming year. And to be voted on, that resolution will need 60 votes -- i.e., they must have Democrats on board.
I wish that, from the get go, they had been hammering on the fact that this big "win" for trump -- forcing through his bill by the deadline he set -- was a completely hollow "victory." They won nothing. It cannot be put into effect without Democratic votes on 9/30.
I wish they had, from the get go, pointed out that there is a REASON the majority party negotiates with the minority party on reconciliation bills. They negotiate because they must. They need the minority party on board to IMPLEMENT reconciliation provisions.
By bowing down to trump, they won nothing. They implemented nothing. And they will not be able to implement the budget without Democrats.
Perhaps I'm flat wrong, but I think if this had been the drumbeat from the day that horrific bill was passed, we would have gone into this fight -- our electeds refusal to be accomplices in the horrific budget, all of it -- in a better position.
So far, I think that everyday that the shutdown continues Republicans are ceding ground to the Democrats. But I think we could have come into this thing far stronger if messaging about their failure to negotiate on reconciliation had been front and center from the day the MAGA Murder Budget passed.
Yes, I realize the "ins and outs" are more complicated than the messaging I propose, but we need to get better at stating simple truths, Too often our leaders get lost in the trees when they need to just be pointing out a few basic realities.
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