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Desperate Sort-Of Speaker Kevin McCarthy Now Begging Monkey-Brained GOP To Fund Government Like Normal People
Good luck, loser!
The government is less than a week away from running out of money and shutting down like your cousin’s boutique shop, and the government doesn’t just sell weird homemade jewelry. Four million Americans who are federal employees will stop getting paid because the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is goddamn amateur hour.
On average, members of the American Federation of Government Employees earn between $55,000 and $65,000 a year, while hourly workers earn an average of $45,000 annually. But thousands make closer to $15 an hour, or $31,200 a year.
“Most of our members live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to miss one payday, let alone more,” said Everett Kelley, president of the union. “That’s why we are calling on Congress to do its job and pass a budget to prevent a government-wide shutdown.”
Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs raved on on social media: “Don’t let the D.C. uniparty scare you into thinking that a government shutdown is the end of the world. A so-called shutdown is really a pause in nonessential federal spending.”
He’s wrong (and an idiot).
Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a tough choice to make, which is why you know the nation is screwed. He can either defy the nihilist wing of his party and work with Democrats to keep the government operating or he can almost guarantee a shutdown but keep his job for at least the next eight minutes.
This week, while the clock’s a tickin’, McCarthy will waste time letting Republicans vote on a series of appropriations bills that will inevitably die in the Democratic-controlled Senate. For instance, a proposed Republican Agriculture spending bill cuts 70 percent of the Food for Peace program. These dummies are big on slash and burn.
Over the weekend, McCarthy looked like more of a fool than usual as Republicans couldn’t get it together to pass their own Defense bill. Marjorie Taylor Greene changed her vote to “no” on the bill she had previously supported because she learned it funded the Ukrainian war effort. Jay Kuo wrote that Greene switching her vote at the last minute “makes little sense because she voted in favor of the same rule before on the same exact bill earlier this week.” However, Greene’s hamster-wheel-powered brain doesn’t produce sensible actions.
Saturday, a pathetic McCarthy lamented that his dementor caucus “don’t want to do a [continuing resolution] because they want to do individual bills. Well, we’ve been trying to pass individual bills this whole time that they’ve been denying us to even get up on.” He added that this puts Republicans in a “very weak position to win anything for the American public,” as if constructive governance was actually a goal of these loons.
“There are still a few members that won’t vote for funding the government while we finish all the 12 bills. I don’t understand,” McCarthy whined to reporters. However, he remained cautiously optimistic that he could avoid a shutdown if members “that have been holding off all this time blaming everybody else, will finally, hopefully, move off.” So, if MAGA Republicans suddenly grow up, we’re good!
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn advised that McCarthy “go sit down with Hakeem Jeffries. If he’s got a solid majority of his caucus, why wouldn’t he? This is the tail wagging the dog. That’s not the way to do it.” Maybe Clyburn’s just trolling McCarthy because it’s sort of his job to understand the power dynamics in the House: If McCarthy makes any major deal with Democratic leader Jeffries, his career is over.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are planning ways to save America from Republican rake-stepping. Late last week, Schumer reportedly filed cloture on a motion to proceed to HR 3935, the House-passed bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). So what, you ask? Well, HR 3935 could serve as the means for the Senate to pass a continuing resolution to fund government. You can do almost anything with amendments over there. Maybe someone can add a “no-gold-bar-hoarding senators” amendment to an already busy HR 3935.
Monday, at least three supposed “moderate” House Republicans — Mike Lawler from New York, Don Bacon from Nebraska, and Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania — were open to filing a discharge petition with Democrats that would force a vote funding the government past the September 30 deadline. This would neutralize the speaker and probably also result in a motion to vacate on account of general uselessness.
However, we’d need at least five sane Republicans to save the day, so don’t get too excited.
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Desperate Sort-Of Speaker Kevin McCarthy Now Begging Monkey-Brained GOP To Fund Government Like Normal People
Ta, Stephen. What the actual fuck?!
Get ready for Government by discharge petition!