What Stupid Bullsh*t Will Republicans Shut Down Government Over THIS Time?
Oh, they want more voter suppression. And a pony. A pony that'll deport everyone.
It’s the middle of September when a Democrat is in the White House, and we all know what that means: Republicans are threatening a partial government shutdown after the current federal budget authorization ends on September 30.
If Congress doesn’t pass an entire budget for the US government by then (it won’t) or at least a temporary spending bill to continue funding at current levels for a set time (also known as a “continuing resolution,” or CR), then as the digital clocks tick over to 12:00 a.m. October 1, most of the government will have to shut down and only “essential workers” will be at work, but unpaid.
Yesterday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed to pass a CR proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), because of course rightwing Republicans blocked it. The bill would have funded the government for six months, but also included a GOP-sponsored voter-suppression measure requiring all Americans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote in national elections. That poison pill ensured that no Democrats would vote for it (we’ll get to the details in a moment), so the final vote came to 220-202, with two “present” votes. All Democrats and 14 Republicans voted “no,” as was expected because when Johnson moved to introduce it last week, there weren’t enough Republicans to pass it then, either.
In addition to the repulsive voter suppression measure, Democrats opposed Johnson’s six-month extension, preferring a three-month CR that would let Congress pass government spending in the lame duck period following the election. The Washington Post also notes (gift link) Johnson’s bill was opposed by “defense hawks [who] had voiced worries that a six-month spending bill would hamstring national security spending,” and who wanted a short extension that would let Congress settle on funding for the rest of the fiscal year, through the end of September 2025.
The Post also reports, citing two anonymous insiders who were “familiar with Johnson’s thinking,” that Johnson plans to make political hay of his failure to get his own caucus behind the bill, explaining that next,
Republicans are expected to blame Democrats and the handful of GOP colleagues who tanked their bill as the reason Johnson must now pivot and begin negotiations with a Democratic-led Senate.
Oh, such fine grownups in every room.
But Johnson’s little plan to let Democrats fix his own mess might be in danger now because Donald Trump chimed in Wednesday with a post on his fake Twitter platform in which he insisted the government must be shut down if the voter suppression bill isn’t passed, “every ounce of it.”
“BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN,” Trump wrote.
The voting bill, called the SAVE Act, was already passed by House Republicans this year, but went nowhere in the Senate. Trump and other fearmongers claim it’s necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting in US elections, even though that simply doesn’t happen except in extremely rare cases, usually because a permanent resident registers to vote despite being ineligible.
For starters, it’s already a felony for noncitizens to register to vote, and another felony if they actually vote. What’s more, records kept by the fearmongers at the Heritage Foundation, which wants voting to be harder, actually show that since the early 1980s, there have been only 68 cases of noncitizens casting a ballot, out of billions of votes in those four decades. Thanks for the evidence, weirdos!
Despite the constant rightwing panic, there simply isn’t a crisis of noncitizens voting. Ah, say the SAVE Act backers, if it’s not a problem, why don’t you Dems simply pass the law, to make absolutely sure nobody slips through at all? You must all love voting by undocumented migrants! Or by Republicans in Arizona!
So here’s the problem with requiring everyone to prove their citizenship before registering to vote: while it’s really easy for most of us to access our birth certificates or other proof of citizenship if we absolutely have to, those crazy democracy advocates at the Brennan Center remind us that about nine percent of Americans of voting age — that’s about 21.3 million of us — don’t have easy access to the documents that would be required. (The survey considered documents to be readily available if respondents said they answered they “could quickly find it if I had to show it tomorrow.”)
There are myriad reasons for this — the documents might be in the home of another family member or in a safety deposit box. And at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.
We also uncovered evidence of racial disparities in these numbers: while just over 8 percent of self-identified white American citizens don’t have citizenship documents readily available, that number is nearly 11 percent among Americans of color.
Well tough shit, right? There are potentially dozens more illegal votes that might be cast in the next few decades, so to prevent that, we should make it harder for millions of US-born citizens to vote. That’s just logic. And if you think it’s too costly or too much trouble to get the records that are missing (or never existed; quite a few older people of color or those born in poverty never had birth certificates), well maybe you aren’t American at all. Besides, you need ID to buy bread, don’t you?
But we digress. Republicans want this stupid, redundant bill because it “does something” about a problem that isn’t real, but which they all believe is making elections illegitimate, so we may very well have a government shutdown over it anyway.
After all, no one but losers and takers need the government anyway.
[WaPo (gift link) / Immigration Impact / Brennan Center]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you prefer to make a one-time donation, we won’t even demand ID.
You could be like me, and have all sorts of documentation, only to find out for some reason they don't count. When I first applied for a passport, I had my driver's license, a work ID, and my "certificate of registration of live birth." They rejected me, as what I had didn't literally say "birth certificate."
So I got my parents to send me everything they had, which include a huge ornately-decorated birth certificate from the hospital, the actual bill from the hospital for my birth (80 bucks after insurance, I was a bargain), a baptismal certificate, etc. None of those counted either.
I finally wrote the state (Pennsylvania, if it matters), who sent me a 3"x5" card with slightly smudged printing, but somehow was good enough. (Plus also there was a different clerk at the State Department office that time, which may have helped.)
No doubt shutting down the US government will fare badly for the GOP this close to the elections. That shit has backfired on the GOP before. Unfortunately for them, they don't pay attention to history. They don't know nothing.
Vote this shit out of Nov. 5, you fine Libs/Progressives. When we fight, we win. In numbers there is strength. All hands on deck. Raise the mizzen mast. Full sails. Argghh, 'mateys! And someone swab the decks, fer crying out loud.