Dave's Verse

Democrats finally used the leverage they had (by benefit of holding the presidency and a majority in the Senate) and waited for Republicans to realize they wouldn't cave to their ridiculous demands. For future reference, Democrats, that is how it's done. Please repeat as necessary. And sadly, I think it will be necessary sooner rather than later. A fairly short term continuing resolution was passed during the last big shutdown in 95. A deal wasn't worked out and there was another shutdown. It was only the second time when Clinton refused to give into all of Newt Gingrich and the GOP's demands that they came to an agreement. I think we're likely to see the same thing happen. Let's start with what Republicans want, because they are clear about it. They want to cut as much spending from just about everything (maybe not defense, but even then I'm not sure since they seem to be accepting the sequester cuts). If they could do anything they wanted, they would at ...

A quick analogy to highlight how ridiculous Republicans are being: imagine Romney won the presidency in 2012, Republicans gained control of the Senate, but lost House control to Democrats. Then imagine that instead of passing a budget or a continuing resolution, Democrats in the House (where spending bills have to originate) say they will let the gov't shut down unless the Senate and Romney agree to very strict gun control policy. That would be ridiculous. What's beyond ridiculous and a lot more dangerous is threatening to not raise the debt ceiling while advocating the same policy. And that brings me to a point Matt Yglesias made today in regard to negotiations (I'm too lazy to link to his post. If your interested go to my twitter page.) He says that Dems and Obama shouldn't just sit back and wait for Republicans to cave and inevitably pass a "clean" CR, meaning it contains nothing about defunding or delaying Obamacare. He thinks their stance should be to a...