Here Comes Another Government Shutdown!
At midnight the federal government turns into a pumpkin.
Here we go again! Another looming government shutdown, almost surely happening at midnight tonight, courtesy of the man and party that want to do everything to the Republic but govern it.
Asked if there’s any room for negotiation by the deadline, Republican Sen. John Kennedy heehawed, “Not unless Chuck [Schumer] stops smoking wizard weed.”
The House passed a stopgap funding measure, but over in the Senate no Democrat is yet willing to vote for a dogshit bill that would cut subsidies for Affordable Care Act insurance plans set to expire at the end of the year, and they’re demanding Republicans pony up some Medicaid funding. How dare they! So selfish! And while Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, they need 60 votes to pass a seven-week stopgap spending measure.
Remember back in Trump’s first term when he shut down the government twice, the second time for 35 days, over DACA and that BORDER WALL that Mexico was supposed to pay for? And, of course, Republicans are once again frantically trying to foist blame on Democrats, and hoping everyone will forget the inconvenient fact of who is currently in control of all three branches of government. In March the ploy worked, and Schumer and a handful of other Democrats caved to avoid a shutdown. And they got ass-blasted for it from their base, too.
PREVIOUSLY!
But this time it may be a shutdown unlike any other.
For one thing, the Federal Unionists Network, representing 820,000 workers, plus 35 local, council, and national unions, are urging Democratic leadership to hold the line and reject any proposal that cuts health care, Social Security, Veterans’ Affairs, and scientific agencies.
And for another, Trump’s head of Office of Management and Budget, Project 2025 lipless sociopathic weirdo Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Mandate For Leadership ghouls have been yearning all of their angry little lives for the executive branch to take full control of the purse-power from Congress, and they see the shutdown as an opportunity to cut workers like never before. Because if they had their druthers, they’d proudly drown just about everything in the federal government budget other than the military and immigration and law enforcement in a bucket.
THAT GUY:
Off the record Trump said he’d welcome a shutdown. And Vought sent out a memo to agencies last week, telling them to prepare to permanently reduce in force any functions not funded by the Big Blowies for Billionaires bill.
And lest you somehow might still be tempted to think that Trump or Republicans have been negotiating in good faith, or negotiating at all, yesterday Chuck Schumer met with Trump and company, and then Trump immediately posted a demented AI of Schumer on his Twitter-knockoff web site, making him say MAGA fan fiction next to Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero while a mariachi band soundtrack plays in the background.
Government by racist keklord AI meme, that’s where we are now. And every day is dumber than the last! Yet Republicans and Trump seem confident that the base will eagerly drink from the firehose of lies. They’ve sure believed dumber things before, even since breakfast. Like that Trump isn’t in the Epstein Files that don’t exist and are also a BIDEN HOAX!
Mike Johnson and John Thune were sent out to the TV to do Sunday shows propaganda. Look at smirking chimp Johnson, getting his jimmies rustled thinking about all those hungry children, with Fox News running a DEMOCRAT SHUTDOWN COUNTDOWN in the corner:
Ouch, Democrats and poor people, Mike Johnson hurt his hand punching you! As if Republicans hadn’t just been trying to DOGE away all of those programs anyway, don’t they hate them? And as if FEMA was even picking up the phone to begin with! Also people who are in the US illegally are not eligible to receive Medicaid coverage, etc. etc. You know all that. They know they’re lying, we know they’re lying, they know we know they know they’re lying, but they think it’s a hoot to lie in everyone’s face, and MAGA thinks they’re all in on the joke.
And the Trump regime just loves to use civil servants as pawns. Vought in particular has a raging boner for traumatizing them as much as possible for the crime of trying to make their fellow citizens’ lives better.
For his part, after the meeting Schumer suggested Trump either played dumb, or actually was (and who can even tell any more?): “We laid out to the president some of the consequences of what’s happening in healthcare, and by his face and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time.”
But JOE WAS OLD and KAMALA LIKED TO LAUGH!
A shutdown will affect a lot. Social Security and Medicare payments will continue, but all government agencies’ non-exempt employees will get furloughed, which means they don’t show up to work, and don’t get paid, though they get back pay once the government re-opens. It’s like a retroactive paid vacation, except that you can’t plan to go anywhere, you have no money, and you might get surprise-fired at some point, and if you don’t get fired, then your work has been piling up for you the whole time. It’s traumatic and inefficient.
Programs like WIC and SNAP have a certain amount of contingency funding, but WIC will not be able to accept new applicants. National Parks, taxpayer services, small business loan programs, and things like routine food and building safety inspections will stop. And Trump’s handpicked Bureau of Labor Statistics guy / Nazi battleship admirer EJ Antoni gets to not turn in any of his new-math economic-data-report homework, how convenient for him!
And, a shutdown could delay (and endanger) flights all over, including the get-back of some of those 800 military top brass members that Trump forced to fly to Virginia all at once on short notice so they could watch Pete Hegseth huff and puff about NO FAT TROOPS. The FAA has estimated that 16,621 employees of the agency’s 29,644 total staff are set to be furloughed, including air traffic controllers. YIKES. And about 335,000 civilian employees at the Defense Department will be furloughed too.
Is America safer yet? Will the shutdown happen? How long will it last? Stay tuned!
[The Telegraph / WSJ gift link/ New York Times archive link / Federal Defense News Network]
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Republicans are once again holding the U.S. economy hostage.
"Democrats should never vote to fund a government that's waging war on its own citizens and firing officials *because* they insist on following court orders instead of breaking the law. Let Senate Republicans nuke the filibuster. None of this is normal and it shouldn't be treated as such."
https://bsky.app/profile/andycraig.bsky.social/post/3lzthwfd2ws2x