No. of Recommendations: 6
Senate dems should all vote against the House CR, shutdown be damned.
And then what?
That's the question. How does this end? Senate Dems vote against the House CR and say they won't change their mind unless something's changed about it....and then what?
The GOP will say no, the government will shutdown, and the American people will experience the massive disruption that comes with government shutdown. This is a boon for the Administration. Firstly, it becomes impossible to separate out what chaos is caused by DOGE's depredations and what was caused by the shutdown. Second, it lets them place everyone they want to stop working on furlough (rather than having to resort to administrative leave), and raises the possibility that they can fire them outright if the shutdown goes on too long. And finally, this causes a massive amount of pain for government workers, who won't be getting paid - so they're going to be pleading with the Democrats to relent and end the shutdown.
Meanwhile, the GOP isn't going to budge. They can't. The House can't pass anything much different than what they passed, and they won't agree to anything that reins in Musk.
So we're basically replaying the 2013 shutdown, but with the parties reversed. Back then, the GOP base was itching for their party to "fight" against the horrors of Obamacare and try to leverage the shutdown into getting it repealed. Since that ask was never ever going to happen, the GOP found themselves in a no-win situation - they Democrats would never give them what they wanted, and they couldn't keep the government closed forever. Once you shut down the government, you know it has to open up again eventually - so the Democrats just waited them out. And they had to fold.
Given that, play this out - after the Democrats reject the CR, what do you think happens?
