General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Question for those callling the shutdown an act of sedition [View all]onenote
(42,700 posts)If they had, we wouldn't be where we are. The House passed a year long budget. The Senate passed a year long budget. Those budgets differed in the amounts of funding for particular programs and overall. The Senate asked the House to appoint conferees so that the two bodies could try to work out their differences. The House, being run by jerks, never did so. Rotten behavior, but not illegal or immoral. Just bad policy.
Without appropriations bills passed to fund the government, the House passed a CR based on its budget plus a poison pill defund the ACA amendment. Again, not illegal, but shitty policy. The Senate then stripped out the text of the House passed CR and substituted a new CR based on the language of the House budget, but without the ACA language. The House refused to pass that and instead passed a new CR, again based on its budget and again with a poison pill ACA provision. (I say "poison pill" because they had to know it was unacceptable to the Senate and the WH). The Senate then stripped out that language and sent back a CR that again was based on the House budget but without the noxious ACA provision -- in other words, a bill that the Senate hoped the House would capitulate and accept but had no reason to believe the House would do so (i.e., just as the President had threatened to veto a bill passed by both Houses that had any ACA language, the Speaker made it clear that no CR without something addressing the ACA would be approved.
The result: stalemate. Without question, it is the House that initiated this game of Chicken when it included the ACA defunding language. That was bad policy and it would be great if the public would understand and punish the repubs for their behavior.