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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAbout. Damn. Time.
Manu Raju? @mkrajuDEMOCRATS may bring Senate business to a halt next week to protest GOP health care plans, w/ @tedbarrettcnn
(CNN)Senate Democrats are weighing whether to bring the chamber's business to a halt next week in an effort to voice their objections to the GOP health care push, according to sources familiar with the effort.
The Democratic leadership and rank-and-file members are planning to prevent the chamber from conducting routine business, including allowing committees to meet for extended hearings when the Senate is in session. And they will demand an open process to consider health care when the Senate reconvenes Monday.
Democrats may use parliamentary maneuvers to prevent committees from meeting for longer than two hours...
One Democratic source cautioned that the caucus may not go that far given the bipartisan atmosphere following the shooting at a congressional baseball practice Wednesday.
But other Democrats said they wanted to escalate the fight to give more prominence to the GOP's closed-door process of drafting health care legislation, which Republican leaders want to pass by month's end.
read: https://t.co/JokJkEZxcA
Zac Petkanas? @Zac_Petkanas 6m6 minutes ago
About. Damn. Time.
...do it.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,112 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)prevent many thousands of deaths each year. I'm for any move that returns enough power to us to stop the archconservatives behind what's happening on the right, but that depends on enough people turning against what's happening. But no one can know that better than our leaders. Our wonderful structure is holding, but they intend to get control of that strength and use it against us.
What if a SCOTUS with the solid ultraconservative majority they are so close to found critical parts of federal social programs unconstitutional? Many have argued that Social Security is unconstitutional on various grounds since its inception; it's not that there aren't arguments. Mandatory education also. Mandatory taxation to pay for them?
That is the plan, and it would take decades for us to undo and rebuild.
HAB911
(8,891 posts)bullshit
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)dalton99a
(81,486 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)dalton99a
(81,486 posts)Initech
(100,075 posts)Phoenix61
(17,006 posts)If it was bipartisan they wouldn't be meeting behind closed doors in the first place. As the repubs so often say, business as usual.
ciaobaby
(1,000 posts)The comment that "One Democratic source cautioned that the caucus may not go that far given the bipartisan atmosphere following the shooting at a congressional baseball practice Wednesday." Is a cop out, pathetic, and pisses me off.
Jacquette
(152 posts)a few pompous speeches....& continue to meet behind close doors to gut health care for millions.
And the Dems are like: oh heaven's to Betsy No! We're all getting along now! We can't be too nasty! We'll ruin bipartisanship!
Suckers. They do it every time.
flotsam
(3,268 posts)to protect the health insurance of millions then they become as much an enemy as the republicans. It's time they either fish or cut bait.
Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)If they are not true Democrats we must rid ourselves of them and replace with a Progressive who will have OUR back, not corporate America's!!!
Volaris
(10,271 posts)a whole lot of things they had better be ready to go to the fuckin' mat for. No, I dont expect all of it to get done. But if we arent willing to TRY to govern this country into a sustainable future across the spectrum for all of us including the idiot deplorables and their corporate Masters, then it don't matter HOW much of the GOP Trump and Crew take with them when they go down, the Deplorables will 'get their country back' BY DEFAULT.
Medicare for all
Appropriate PROGRESSIVE taxation
Repeal of (most) of the Patriot Act
Funding for PUBLICLY OWNED national high-speed rail and Utilities (the dept of energy should buy every empty factory building in the rust belt and just start cranking out solar panels)
Subsidized College or technical educations
This is just the beginning...
flotsam
(3,268 posts)...you have to say quite simply "no". It is time.
Volaris
(10,271 posts)Will say 'oh well, see, this is what the gop did to obama, and now the dems are doing it to trump, so it's obvious that both sides do it so there's equal blame and this is why Democrats should be the Bigger People and meet halfway'...
And you and I and everyone else that's not a complete fucking moron will know that's bullshit. When they did it, it was done because they knew they would lose the argument if they didnt; that's all they have any more is the contrarian argument. They're not FOR anything except being against their own citizens. If we govern like we mean it, it means their political destruction and they know it. You're right. It's time.
lastlib
(23,233 posts)and I expect my leaders to go to war with them. If we go down, we go down fighting!
elmac
(4,642 posts)to stop the fascist pigs.
forgotmylogin
(7,528 posts)I know the Rs outnumber the Ds, but if the Democrats just didn't show up and got a couple more Rs to play hooky as well, would that prevent them from legislating due to less than half of them being there?
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)All-In
(312 posts)If the fascists want to shove a bill up our asses that will kill thousands, and has 20% support, where is the downside to stopping it completely?
I know democracy has already died, but we can still fight.
calimary
(81,266 posts)Just DO IT, DAMMIT. No "may" do it. Just fuckin' DO IT. Show some SPINE!!!
ResistantAmerican17
(3,807 posts)Perfect of example of how we Democrats end up as chronic losers. Which of these is the best example of the so-called current spirit of bipartisanship?
1. Closed door health care meetings excluding Democrats? Dropping health care for millions and giving nearly a billion dollars in tax breaks to the super wealthy.
2. Stealing Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat? Depriving the country of any chance of progressive law for decades to come.
3. Colluding with the Russians to swing the 2016 election to the Supreme Leader of Bullshit Mountain? Giving us such bipartisan luminaries as Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, Jared and Ivana, and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
4. Undoing every single Progressive success that the last real President of the United States implemented? Reversing 8 years of efforts on behalf of middle class Americans. Shifting more of the tax burden to the poor and the middle class.
5. Gutting the Dodd-Frank consumer protections? Paving the way for the next taxpayer funded bailout when the Wall Street banksters and Trump's Goldman Sachs boardroom, er cabinet, members get their coveted license to steal.
Hopefully you get the point. So please listen up "Democratic source," this "we just want to get along" surrender-monkey mentality is why so many of us progressives and liberals don't think you give a shit about prioritizing the needs of your constituency. Find me an example of a significant portion of the Progressive base that gives a tinker's damn about bipartisanship. This is a battle against tyranny. House Whip Scalise is apparently going to be fine. He will be right back shilling for the Koch brothers and the NRA before you know it and will be a martyr on Breitbart and at the alt-right alter. Don't get sucked in by Mitch McConnell. He's a lying, two-faced slimeball that stands out even according to lying two-face slimeball Washington, D.C. standards.
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)The GOP leadership want's to push through a bill that no one can see. Just have GOP members vote for it, even if it will cost them their seats, don't have hearings, don't ever let the Dems see it, and the Dems are talking about 'bipartisanship'??? WTF?
world wide wally
(21,743 posts)Fuck 'em
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)ananda
(28,860 posts)nt
bigtree
(85,996 posts)Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)It's NECESSARY, IMO, for the Dems to get down on what's going on and to express their disapproval and shed light on what's going on.
The Republicans would obstruct, and DID obstruct, when faced with much better scenarios.
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)Guilded Lilly
(5,591 posts)plain and simple. Beyond their fucking racist hatred for a black President who actually loved his country and the people in it, had keen intelligence, wit and Class...these gawd damn old white men and their younger soulless punk versions are plotting to KILL people so they can fill their greedy pockets.
They hide behind the billious Cretin who is a waste of human flesh and has no business setting one slimey foot in the White House and fouls the country every time he opens his lying mouth.
He will never come close to being presidential OR decent OR responsible OR capable OR intelligent. And yet this walking neandrathal narcissist imbecile is the titular leader of the free world!
I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE we have come to this.
Other than the supremely satisfying fact that all these little Republican shits will all DIE eventually, I want every Democrat to use every single possible tactic to first legally and fiercely stop them, second punch their smug ass faces into political pulp and kick their wretched asses out of the capital. Just DO it.
And I've been having a relatively good day...but this MUST end. The stench of elitist entitled conservative right wing pricks is overwhelming.
kentuck
(111,095 posts)They talk the talk but they don't walk the walk.
bigtree
(85,996 posts)...the majority of them are sent there to deconstruct regulations and obligations of corporations and the 1%, and to direct govt. resources and taxpayer money to support and enrich the enterprises of their wealthy benefactors.
Demonaut
(8,916 posts)burrowowl
(17,641 posts)byronius
(7,394 posts)And a dangerous idea at this point in time. The GOP is pursuing a bloody course that promises serious consequences. I would prefer absolute divide at this moment. People's lives hang in the balance.