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Fiscal hawks killed CR provisions that had already passed

The post-revolt CR passed by the House performatively cut off both funding for pediatric cancer research and the transfer of RFK Stadium to DC. Why? Who knows. It demonstrated toughness from fiscal conservatives, I guess?

But it was just a show. It turns out both of those things had been passed by the House months ago. All the Senate had to do was pass them too, so they did by unanimous consent. I guess even Rand Paul wanted to get home for the holidays.

What a bunch of idiots.

26 thoughts on “Fiscal hawks killed CR provisions that had already passed

    1. Altoid

      Schumer had it up for unanimous consent yesterday and Paul was the lone one objecting, which blocked it, but at some point last night he dropped his objection and it went through. One article I saw says Paul had been telling Schumer all along-- ie since the House passed it-- that he'd object, but until yesterday the Reps were saying Schumer was to blame for the bill not passing. What a surprise.

      Rand Paul is some piece of work.

      1. spatrick

        What's amusing about Rand as a former Paulite is that for much of his public career he foresworn being a gadfly, voting against everything like his father. So what is he doing? Being like his father without any kind of purpose to it. He's not really creating a brand for himself for future runs for higher office like his dad, he's just being an asshole because I suspect (although I've never met him), that's really who he is deep down. I've often wondered why he stays in politics instead of going back to his medical practice because there's no real purpose to his political career anymore after he shot his wad with his disastrous Presidential campaign. If he's not kissing up to McConnell he sucking Trump's dick instead. Is it worth it? It can't be the money because he'd make more or just as much as a doctor and not live in DC. He's never going to be President. So what's the point? Strange because he's the last person I imagined who would stay in it.

        1. Altoid

          What is it Tom Nichols says about these people? Once they've had a taste of DC they'd do anything and everything to avoid living among the people who sent them there? Something like that. Plus if you've always wanted to be a star and a VIP, being chased around by a gaggle of eager reporters hanging on your every word all the time must be a dream come true.

  1. Jasper_in_Boston

    I think the big story from this is that Trump's challenge with GOP fiscal hawks is yet one more sign of his slipping grip on the Republican Party. (No, seriously!).

    I figured even Trump wouldn't be immune to lame duck-itis, (and it could be mere wishful thinking on my part), but I'm thinking it's happening a lot faster than I had anticipated...

    (1) His AG pick was summarily shot down by Republican Senators.

    (2) His SecDef nomination continues to face skepticism.

    (3) His DOI nomination continues to face skepticism.

    (4) Jay Powell appears to be going nowhere.

    (5) His desire to shift en masse to recess appointment was rejected by Republican Senators.

    (6) His threats and bluster apparently had little to no effect in terms of getting what he wanted on the continuing resolution. GOP budget hawks don't appear to be the least bit intimidated by MAGA.

    (7) His daughter-in-law has been told to go jump in a lake by the Governor of Florida.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/lara-trump-withdraws-florida-senator

    There are probably other items I'm missing.

    Know hope.

    1. Altoid

      Bringing this to life, check out the skeet with a pic of him signing hats in Florida while, as Filipkowski's caption says, Musk deals with Congress (little burn there).

      Re #6, the Krazy Klownkar Kaukus has given up on trump-- doesn't think he's pure enough-- so they have to force him, along with everybody else, to Do What's Right. I couldn't say why, but every time I think of them, the chase music from Benny Hill starts playing in my head.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        Krazy Klownkar Kaukus has given up on trump-...but every time I think of them, the chase music from Benny Hill starts playing in my head.

        LOL. Good call.

        They're crazy in the sense that they're deeply mistaken about how the world works, and so their policy prescriptions are ludicrous. But many of them are very sincere (in a whack job way, to be sure) about what they want in terms of policy outcomes.

        But Trump doesn't care about "policy" as such. He just wants revenge, riches, sex, immunity from prosecution, and obsequious displays of loyalty/cowering/ring-kissing from his admirers. And that's a problem for the Rand Paul crowd.

        1. Altoid

          Sincere and mistaken sounds about right-- they're the people you don't want to get into a side conversation with at a party. My ex-brother-in-law is like that about how the earth is actually flat.

  2. D_Ohrk_E1

    Bottom line, none of things mattered to Trump. All Trump wanted was the debt ceiling to be raised under Biden's signature. Coming up early next year is a test to Democratic resolve to sit back and let the GOP fight itself. I bet they cave and let Republicans claim bipartisanship on a lot of shitty, but not disastrous, policies.

    1. MindGame

      All Trump wanted was the debt ceiling to be raised under Biden's signature.

      Precisely. He knows (instinctively more than anything) that his policies will, once again, blow up the deficit, and the debt-ceiling fight each time focuses attention exactly on that and his central role in creating it.

    2. spatrick

      Right, because the last thing Trump wants is for the GOP in the House to use the debt ceiling on HIM!. Yes he should abolish it but that's for him to do and doesn't want to. Well, kudos to the Dems for spotting his little trick and calling him on it.

    1. Altoid

      Ah, thanks. I knew it wasn't Yakkety-Yak but the right name wasn't coming. Also most people here will get both the sound and the visuals from seeing the Benny Hill reference, and the visuals matter at least as much in this context.

  3. NotCynicalEnough

    The way I see this playing out is that after the new Congress is sworn in, the debt ceiling will be repealed as none of them actually care about the debt. However the states are the laboratory of democracy and one thing you can count on is that if the GOP loses the house in the midterms, they will pass a lot of cuts to programs that help not rich people and bring back the debt ceiling set just high enough to cover spending to to end of Trump's term. They have become the masters of Calvinball.

    1. Altoid

      To embed them in something that absolutely had to be passed by the senate too-- the "Christmas tree" approach they use in the omnibus spending bills, or what they'll often try with the defense appropriations bills. It probably isn't that rare, and I don't think they'd have to include the whole texts all over again, just could refer to them by number. (Which if accurate would really expose how fatuous it was for Musk to complain about how many fricken *pages* the CR was. As if that had anything to do with the price of beans. Brevity may be a good thing when it comes to coding, but legislating is a whole different genre he doesn't have any experience with or knowledge of, as far as I know.)

      1. Austin

        Ugh. The fucking number of pages obsession.

        The reason why legislation involving money has so many pages is because nobody trusts the federal agencies or the states with a piece of paper that just says something like “spend $X billion on hurricane relief.” So the piece of paper has to detail out exactly how the $X billion is to be spent, and because we’re a huge country with lots of communities and people facing all sorts of different problems, it ends up taking lots of pages to describe exactly how the $X billion should be doled out.

        This distrustful world was largely created by Republicans and their Democratic enablers. Every time they are outraged by an example of money going to something or someone they disapprove of, even though the legislation enabling it didn’t prohibit that from happening, the next spending bill gets more pages added to it to prevent that “scandal” from happening again. And thus, thousand page bills are born.

  4. jdubs

    So the only big change was removing restrictions on direct investment in China and China's ability to buy US real estate in sensitive areas?

    Lot's of noise about everything else, almost no noise about this one....and yet....

    Hmmm......

  5. JohnH

    No big mystery. They've had their meaningless show of toughnesss against the liberals, and it may even be a bonus that the stadium deal is all show with nothing at stake and that it's the closest they can get to killing health care altogether lest someone benefit. And they've had their very public demonstration once every few months of dysfunctional government, meaning THEM, so that they can run to lead the country by running against government itself.

  6. mistermeyer

    (Sigh...) You got distracted, as intended, by what actually happened. The restrictions on outbound investment (Cornyn-Casey) was stripped from the bill. Care to guess who benefits from this? Perhaps... a South African building giant factories in China? The very same unelected, unaccountable billionaire who blew up the CR? (Link: https://bit.ly/4gQ2pIf)

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