Democrats Plan to Use the GOP’s Own Bill Against Them to End Government Shutdown

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chris van hollen
If this isn’t delicious…

Democrats are finally catching on regarding how to fight the nihilistic, anarchistic fringe minority that’s running the Republican Party.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post revealed that Democrats have found a possible way out of the Tea Party shutdown:

Dems have hit on a way to use a “discharge petition,” which forces a House vote if a majority of Representatives signs it, to try to force the issue. Previously, it was thought this could not work, because a discharge petition takes 30 legislative days to ripen, so if this were tried with the clean CR that passed the Senate, this couldn’t bear fruit until some time in November.

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But now House Democrats say they have found a previously filed bill to use as a discharge petition — one that would fund the government at sequester levels.

That bill Representatives Chris Van Hollen and George Miller will reportedly use (The Government Shutdown Prevention Act) happens to be a Republican bill, so that’s rather fitting. Jennifer Bendery, who covers the White House for The Huffington Post, ‏tweeted, “Dem Rep. George Miller on rounding up 218 votes for discharge petition: ‘We expect we can get them all in one day.'”

But this is the House of Representatives, so naturally, predictions based on reason are worthless. On cue, Sabrina Siddiqui, a Politics Reporter at the Huffington Post, tweeted, “GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, of “tea party lemmings” fame, says there’s “not a chance” he’d sign Democrats’ discharge petition.”

Of course, Republicans want to appear as if they got something for holding a gun to America’s head — apparently a super bad reputation isn’t enough to take home to their tea districts. They have to post the heads of their enemies in the town square or they’re losers tea party style.

Sargent says Dems can force a vote by October 14th and if they get the 218 signatures on the discharge petition, they can replace the Lankford bill with a clean CR. (Let us not forget that we would not even be here discussing a short term CR if Republicans hadn’t been deliberately avoiding budget conference with Democrats for the last five months, waiting until they could get their hands on quivering victims like the international economy.)

Speaker Boehner (R-OH) won’t put up the Senate passed CR up for a vote because it would pass, and this would be very bad for his future career. The Senate passed CR is funded at sequester levels, so essentially Republicans are once again refusing to vote yes on their own ideas because it might help Obama if the country didn’t tank.

That means that the country is paying for John Boehner to keep his job. Boehner keeps saying he wants to “talk” but he refuses to take the gun away from the country’s head first. That’s a stick up, not an offer to talk, but whatev.

Dave Weigel of Slate tweeted that the Democratic strategy is to wait until Republicans wake up, which is hardly comforting since that will never happen: “Rep. Jim McDermott on Dem strategy against GOP: ‘We sit here until they figure out they f**kin’ lost.'”

Before anyone lets the alleged moderate Republicans off the hook, as I’ve pointed out numerous times, they have refused to stand up to the corporate tea party. They have had ample opportunity to end this shutdown standoff. In but one example, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) gave them a chance to use procedural votes to end it, but instead they bowed down to the tea money. Their words mean nothing. Their votes mean everything.

Every Republican who did not jump on King’s coup is responsible for the shutdown, because in the grown up world, beating up the vulnerable kid because your friends were doing it isn’t a valid excuse.

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