The taxes paid to bring $$$ back into the country is a slam dunk for them. It's a small price to pay to get to deploy $250B+, and most of it will go to share buybacks anyway. Now let's see how much of that $30B in US investment comes to pass.

Right, I feel puny at 6' 195 :lol: :lol:

Thoughts on the possibility of the government shutting down this week?

Well I’m sure the President is doing his best to make sure the government has a united, positive and amenable attitude to avoid the shutdown.

I don't know the Chrysler move but the Apple one isn't that big of a deal. It's a $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut and we're celebrating $300 million going back to some employees? With Apple's average salary at $100k, it's a 2.5% one year raise which is kind of standard at a lot of companies.

It's also vested stock over 3 years. So it's as much a tool to limit turnover as it is a "bonus".

Repatriation is a giant fuck you to every company that paid their taxes at the normal tax rate over the years. I understand why it's done but it's another example of a company that was screwing over this country getting a handout.

In the House there are basically three political parties, the Dems, the GOP, and the Freedom Caucus. Basically no Dems will vote for a CR, all the GOP will for a CR and the Freedom Caucus is the big unknown. My guess is they find a short term solution tomorrow, but maybe they don't.

As to the substance of the debate, a DACA fix would pass the Senate and probably the House, a CHIP extension would pass the Senate and probably the House, but the GOP wants to use them as leverage to get other things.

I think there will be a shut down. They don't seem to have 60 votes in the Senate right now. And Trump is confusing as hell tweeting that CHIP shouldn't be included in a short term CR this morning and then the White House had to reverse that. How do you work with that guy? Just send him the DACA and CHIP bills and force him to veto them, which he won't.

But the GOP leadership won't let them come up for a vote.

And the Freedom Caucus caved. On to the Senate where the most underreported story is that the GOP probably only has 49 votes as a best case with McCain in AZ and Cochran medically questionable at best.

Can we stop using the term 'government shutdown'? Wouldn't 'short term partial government sabbatical' be more accurate?

At one point Trump was OK with a government shutdown. Now that one is possibly imminent his tune has changed.

Because he knows he'll be blamed. He'll probably be playing golf in Florida this weekend while the shutdown happens. He's supposed to be this great deal maker so make a deal. And a deal was already made by Durbin and Graham, which he said before he'd sign.

This is why evangelicals voted for him:

Trump administration announces new 'conscience and religious freedom' division at HHS - ABC News

He won't be able to funnel cash to his resorts during a shutdown.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out Gov. Christie:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ck/1047239001/

Trump, showing how dedicated he is to this country has announced he will not be going to Florida this weekend in case Congress is able to get a spending deal on his desk. What dedication!

The next thing down the shithole express is the president trying to sell his infrastructure plan which is mostly just a bunch of govt loans to entice private companies to do all the work and therefore return that cost back to the customer. I bet trump would sell off the entire highway and interstate structure for tolls if he thought he could get away with it.

{edit: lack of capitalization intended.}

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...proval-rating/

Always an opposing tweet.

My sense is that people are far angrier at the President than they are at Congress re the shutdown—an interesting turn!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2013

sure he will, SS is considered protection of life an property....

shut downs only hurt working feds and contractors.

Always.

Leadership: Whatever happens, you're responsible. If it doesn't happen, you're responsible.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2013

Senate vote 50-48. Government will shut down.

It's unclear to me what else the Dems want besides DACA. I think they want other things to? If it truly is primarily about DACA, then I'm in the below camp. This is a weak position for the Dems and think it can backfire on them.

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/19/politi...aca/index.html

I think there's short term damage, but when the President rejected a long negotiated deal and then apparently rejected a personally negotiated deal today, what do you do? Giving in only gets you back in this position in a month. I'm not thrilled with the filibuster, but the GOP has shown pretty clearly that persuadable voters aren't paying attention and will just blame the party in power when things go wrong.

McConnell can't herd his own cats right now. He lost 4, plus McCain's absence. He needs a dozen Dem votes then.. He got 5. He's not even close.

DACA is heavily supported by the public, is supported by dems in congress, is publicly supported by the GOP in congress, but is opposed by the President and McConnell can't unite his party enough to decide how much they support it.

I don't think this one will end up falling on the dems shoulders. Government shutdowns always fall on the party with majority control. The fact that this will be the first shutdown when one party controls congress and the executive says quite a bit.

They also keep doing these piss ant two week extensions instead of doing any work or negotiations. Partially because of that, they've gone from 8 Dem "no"s on 12/7 to 29 on 12/22 to 44 tonight.

But not at the expense of a government shutdown. I work with several single mothers and God help the Dems if their tax returns get delayed.

We lose all household income over this so I'm well aware of the impact.

Anecdotally people are going to be pissed at the dems the same as people were supposed to be pissed at the republicans over the Obamacare shutdown. However, it always falls on the majority party in the end. Without fail.

Thank you Senator Paul. What bullshit from Congress (and the news media) trying to spin this as a DACA for or against issue. When is this government ever going to curb its appetite for out of control spending? Republicans (supposedly the conservatives) control everything and they still want to spend, spy on Americans, and spend some more. Kudos also to Mike Lee and while I have trouble trusting Lindsay Graham supposedly they are some bombshells on the way about the FBI and domestic spying so I will see what that brings. Sorry Trump and GOP but you don’t just get a rubber stamp to spend because you control everything.

Of course by the time I go to bed some sort of compromise and business as usual will probably already have been reached.

It is important to note that a clean DACA fix and a clean CHIP extension could pass any time they were brought to the floor.

Yeah I either love or hate Rand Paul and this one of the times I approve.

At least he's consistent

Trump Whines: Shutdown Fight Could Make Me Miss ‘My Party’

This needs to pass

JUST IN: Group of Senate Democrats introduce bill to withhold congressional pay during government shutdown:

“If members of Congress can’t figure this out and keep the government open, then none of us should get paid.”

— Sen. Claire McCaskill pic.twitter.com/fWk1ukZwz9

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) January 19, 2018

Sometimes opposing video too.

This will be called the #TrumpShutdown. There is no one who deserves the blame for the position we find ourselves in more than President Trump. pic.twitter.com/WE3SH9TpRU

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 20, 2018

This, or something like it, gets proposed every time.

TL;DR: it's unconstitutional. Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The 27th Amendment, proposed in the 18th century and finally ratified in 1992, was designed to prevent Congress from voting themselves immediate pay raises. The way it's worded, they can't vote themselves immediate pay cuts, either.

They could pass a bill that contemplates punitive measures in the event of future shutdowns, but it could not legally take force until after the 2018 class of Representatives gets seated about this time next year.

That's why one side or the other proposes these bills every time there's a shutdown or the threat of one, but nothing ever comes of it.

It's good optics and it plays well with your average voter when a Senator says "if we can't unfuck this shit, we shouldn't get paid," but the hurdle between 'we should' and 'we can' is sufficient that by the time such a law could actually take effect, the shutdown has come and gone and nobody is focused much on the pay issue any longer.

Dola,

The attached press release references that, I know, but it's a little bit inside baseball as far as most citizens are concerned. It's not like the Bill of Rights where the Amendments have a sound-bite quality to them that enables the average citizen to go 'oh yeah that's a thing.'

Instead, the idea that 'if we can't unfuck this shit we shouldn't get paid' resonates with folks on a gut level, but probably 99% of them don't realize that it's not possible to do to sitting Congressfolk, and that any given time this bill, or something like it, is proposed, the timing is such that it's either right after an election (so two years before it can kick in), or gearing up for an election (in the current case, about ten months).

The nature of the fiscal calendar is such that this issue never rears its head at a time when the distance between proposed action and potential remedy is short enough for the voting public to connect the dots.

So you're saying it's a good PR move for a Dem senator from Missouri who voted for cloture on the bill and is up for reelection in November.

It's a good PR move for any Senator who voted for cloture, because the optics resonate well with the general public.

Doesn't matter whether the bill ever gets traction for the reasons mentioned. The 27th Amendment means that by the time it could take effect, nobody would notice.

But playing things off such that "I'M the adult in the room; it's the rest of Congress that can't unfuck its shit" will almost never play badly with one's constituency.

WTF CNN.

You have a freaking shutdown counter w/seconds ticking off in your lower right. I'm good with a clock but with seconds ticking off is pretty damn annoying. Good way to attract viewers you idiots.

Wonder what his neighbor thinks?

Still a weird story.

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/19/politi...ges/index.html

I don't think it violates the 27th if pay is withheld during the shutdown, but then paid back when the government reopens (as happens with many federal workers). That way the compensation hasn't varied, only the schedule of compensation has changed.

Paul Ryan should get a refund on his acting classes.

What a d-bag.

Yeah, but the 27th doesn't differentiate between amount and schedule.

Nor does the 27th forbid changing the schedule - what it says is you can't make that change until after an intermediate election has passed and the new Congress seated.

And that's the larger issue. The Supreme Court would have to weigh in on what "varying the compensation" actually means. Or meant, as this is a fun case where the text was drafted by the Founders and ratified 200 years later. Was it simply to keep Congress from repeatedly looting the Treasury on its own behalf, or did the Founders envision a world where the issue of Congress being paid at all would become a political football as the government struggled to meet its basic Constitutional duties?

Straight up, the 27th very much appears to block a bill of this nature from taking full force for a year, even if passed tomorrow. But maybe the Supreme Court would be sympathetic to a looser reading of the text.

But under that reading, wouldn't the government be violating minimum wage law for the federal workers whose pay is stopped, but still have to work during a shutdown? Senators currently make $174,000 a year. If that amount hasn't changed, then I think it's a pretty easy argument to say that compensation hasn't varied. I think SCOTUS would agree, unless there is some legislative history that shows the ratification was intended to deal with scheduling also, but I highly doubt that.

Of course, the bill would go into effect until blocked by the courts, and only 535 people in the US would likely have the right to sue in this case. It would be political suidice for any of them to do so.

The 27th explicitly calls out Congressional pay. Not the pay of Federal employees. They could pass a bill nerfing, say, Trump's pay until the shutdown ends. The 27th shrugs at that.

They could pass a law mandating that military funding continues unabated at prior levels in the interim in the case of a shutdown. 27th doesn't care.

They could pass a law that doubles the pay of any federal employee furloughed during a shutdown. Yes, that's ridiculous. No, it's not forbidden by the 27th Amendment.

It's the House and Senate with which the 27th concerns itself.

I never said all federal employees were covered under the 27th and I'm frankly confused as to how you read it that way. (I even said only 535 people could sue.)

My point was that under the theory the 27th mandates the same schedule, then minimum wage law should mandate you can't pay someone nothing with the promise of later back pay.

"Should" and "does" aren't the same thing. You can make that case, but it's not a 27th Amendment case - it's a 14th Amendment case. Kinda. It's an equal protection issue since Congressional pay is explicitly protected, but the 14th calls out the states, not the feds. The courts have been willing to throw that blanket over federal infringements, also, but you'd still have to convince SCOTUS that it applies here also.

Yeah, it's a nice thought experiment, but unless the shutdown is prolonged, then any suit to declare a Congressional pay freeze unconstitutional would be moot by the time it was brought.

Do the courts even work during a shutdown?


But yeah the story I linked does say that any changes won't take effect until the next congress is seated.

Lots of legalese.

How about congress just donate their pay during this shutdown to a charity of their choice as a matter of principle?

It'll be interesting to see how the 'Christians' feel if this is ever invoked by another religion against something they deem a 'norm' ...

I'm sure it will be something like evil Muslims trying to spread Sharia law over us god-abiding Christians...

Rep. Duckworth, an Iraq war vet, and double amputee, lectures "Cadet Bone Spurs" about the military and govt. shutdown:

Duckworth slams Trump: I won't be lectured on military needs by a 'five-deferment draft dodger' | TheHill

I get to pay a penalty on my taxes because I can't afford insurance. Thanks Obama!

I guess one of the few positives about Trump is that he got rid of it.

I think I remember the IRS getting an instruction to not enforce the fine. You may want to look into that.

Dems tried to introduce a bill that would ensure military was paid through the shutdown and McConnell wouldn’t let it come to the floor for a vote.

If the R's did anything they proved that total obstruction, no matter how it plays in the short term, does enough damage in the long term, that the base gets fired up about the fight, making it worth it.

This would have changed had trump not gotten elected, but that reward now is set in political stone.

Once Nunes authorizes himself to release the memo written by himself then Obama, Hillary, and every liberal in the country is going to jail and no one has to worry about a budget vote.

So this is the message you get when you call the White House:

Veronica Rocha on Twitter: "This is the message you get when you call the White House. https://t.co/Ry8UcxBCxQ"

I think that playbook only works for R’s though, being the anti-government party means there is really no downside for them.

And there is no way it would have ended if Hillary won, that shit would have gone to 11. Congressional obstruction by R’s isn’t some devised strategy, it’s a desperate response to the base.

It's a little of both. Obstruction was the strategy from the word "go" once Obama got sworn in, but once you commit to total obstruction of the blah guy, anything less than obstructing 100% of what any other Democrat wants to do is a non-starter.

Look at a certain Georgian around these parts for the base's opinion of any Republican whose commitment to that ideal is sufficiently impure.

Senate reaches a compromise on the shutdown:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/polit...ess/index.html

I had bought some "No" on the shutdown on predictit.com

Reading the fine print, I think that I will still lose because they will consider it a shutdown if 500,000 or more were furloughed for part of the day.

Haven’t the Repubs consistently said they’ll do things to pass bills and then not done them. Flake was promised a DACA resolution and Collins was promised an ACA stabilization and neither happened. Why are they believing that McConnell will keep to his word this time?

My thoughts (worth probably about 0.4 cents):

(1) The Dems bungled the messaging on this shutdown. I think that they thought that the "the GOP is in charge of everything and let it shut down" message would be the talking point and didn't really work to make it the message. The GOP came out strong with "Schumer shut down the government for a bunch of illegal immigrants" and were starting to really change public opinion. So the Dems' hand was getting weaker by the hour.

(2) CHIP funding isn't nothing. At a minimum, it take the issue off the table. And I think that a lot of Dems really wanted it.

(3) McConnell's promise was pretty public and important this time. It will be harder for him to weasel out of it.

In short, the Dems were in a weak position 2 days into the shutdown. Getting out of it with CHIP and a promise was probably the best they could do.

He probably won't, but if we get another shutdown after February 8, then it will quite obviously be seen as a result of McConnell not honoring his part of the bargain. Basically it puts the Dems in a better position than this shutdown (though it seems from the polls more people blamed the Republicans for this shutdown than the Dems).

They got 6 years of CHIP funding and much more leverage in a few weeks if McConnell backs out. Not sure what people expected them go get considering they don't hold any power.

McConnell can let the immigration bill pass in the Senate and Ryan can just block it. House will pass its own version and nothing will get done. Next CR in 3 weeks, Republicans will just hold something else hostage like opioid or disaster relief funding and we'll be right back where we started.

It forces Ryan to put it up for vote or they have a reason to shutdown again.

And even then it's a nice campaign message that if you win the House you can pass DACA which is very popular.

Given that Trump already wants to cut 95% of the opioid relief, the Dems should just shrug and let him do it if they try to hold it over them.

Its typical Trump though - given the chance he'll claim he had billions ear marked and its the evil Democrats who blocked it ..then again he'll probably do that anyway ;)

This is pretty good, too.

.@SenTedCruz : "I have consistently opposed shut downs"

CHIP funding should never have been a part of this discussion. It's a bipartisan issue with strong support across both sides of the aisle. It's an easy one for the R's to push on and call a negotiating victory. We see it in pilot contract negotiations. You've got something that has been agreed to for years, then as you get closer to the end of the contract, the company starts taking little things away that they had been doing, it goes to grievance. That process takes years, meanwhile the company then uses it as a bargaining chip for you to give something up to get, avoid grievance and get it in language in the new contract. The basically take something for nothing, and it's a bargaining win.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ean-energy-yet

I guess these 23,000 jobs aren’t important. What a fucking waste of oxygen this guy is.

I'm a bit surprised Trump didn't just ignore the threat and just let it happen:

Man arrested, accused of threatening to kill CNN employees

I actually think it's not as bad as headlines are laying it out to be. There's a lot to argue on one side to support it. God, if Obama had tried to do something like this there might have been howling from the right about socialism and ending capitalism.

From NPR:


The Chinese are essentially the Amazon of the global market. They command sheer size and scale enough to completely disrupt a market. On top of that, they will steal any tech or product they can, and attempt to reproduce it in mass for much cheaper, quality be damned. We've seen it all over.

If American companies can't even get a foothold in their own country in the industry before the Chinese force them out, how are we going to develop this industry? Protectionism has to work on some level. Frankly, I'm shocked that his base isn't screaming Socialism.

I'm good with protectionism for nascent industries. With China stealing and not playing "fair" with Google et al, I'm good with specifically targeting (and competing) with China more broadly. US should protect our "intellectual capital" more.

I understand other countries and markets will fill the void and US may be left out (sorry Buick, Tesla, Google, FB, Tinder et al). However, I think this is economic warfare and we should respond strategically (we need a good old Japanese-like crash in China), think long term, and create new, strengthen existing partnerships with other countries (and I'm not saying Trump is doing a good job here).

Stuff like this is a good reminder that people who profess to be large proponents of "the free market" are only interested in it inasmuch as it helps the already wealthy. One can quickly skim any list of the wealthiest Americans and realize that the list is directly shaped by how the United States government enforces intellectual property laws.

Looking forward to this.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/polit...ump/index.html

In addition to that moment, she also announced she is pregnant-which would make her the first woman to give birth while serving in the Senate. 49 years old.

Biden: McConnell stopped Obama from calling out Russians
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...e-biden-359531

And then in 2017 when proof came out that the Russians were doing it they would have been vindicated and McConell would have been pilloried. Just do what's right and stop worrying about the electoral consequences.

Big +1`

or conservatives would have gone SEE THE DEEP STATE LAID A PLAN IN 2016 TO DESTROY TRUMP THEY TRIED TO PREVENT HIS ELECTION AND NOW THEY'RE TRYING TO SMEAR HIM

...wait, what they're doing already.

(point is no I don't think McConnell would have taken shit from the political right at all. the right would have found a way to blame Obama; they always have)

I agree with Sack. The same evidence is before the public already, and Republicans are ignoring it. I have no sense that they'd be more likely to believe it had President Obama come out with it earlier.

Let's not forget we only care about......BENGAZI!!!!!!!!

Sure the Trump supporters would ignore the evidence, but stating the truth clearly and casting the light on McConnell would have been miles better than staying silent so that the GOP wouldn't make inflammatory statements.

I generally think too many Dems, especially Obama, came to believe the jokes about eleven-dimensional chess and too often looked for ways to win an imaginary game rather than just stating principles and living with the consequences. I think that will work much better long term.

Schumer's lack of a clear strategy on the shutdown is another good example.

One of the things that bothers me about Obama's presidency is how the messaging out of his office tended to downplay news, whether positive or negative. I can understand why they went that way, trying to not ruffle feathers and to continue working in a bipartisan manner, but there are some points that should've been laid out. If they had this evidence, that should've been laid out.

This helps the narrative that the GOP understands its base fairly well: do just enough to be able to make the argument that they're working for them and the base will allow a lot. The Dems still don't know how to get a united message out to their base, and it's hurting their prospects

The problem with this is that to 30-40% of the electorate, Obama was the "food stamp" president and any good news coming from him would be interpreted as something that was robbing "real Americans" to benefit undeserving minorities.

I'd agree on the Russian interference being something worth mentioning, and I'm guessing Obama was looking at it from the establishment Democrat point of view that Hillary was 99% likely to win anyways and as a result he didn't want to give Trump something to use to possibly foment violence once defeated.


Half the base just needs a tax cut, and the other half will put up with whatever as long as you make sure minorities are even worse off than they are.

Kind of wondering why the Turks bombing the shit out of and killing US aligned fighters in Syria isn't getting more negative coverage here.

As a solar company, we are devastated to learn Trump has imposed a 30% tariff on solar panels virtually killing the solar industry. Solar employs more people than coal and oil combined. today's decision will cause the loss of roughly 23,000 American jobs this year.

— Eugene Wilkie (@NOW1SOLAR) January 22, 2018

Boy that guy sure likes solar-his comments go and on in the comments section.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 3h3 hours ago




Will soon be heading to Davos, Switzerland, to tell the world how great America is and is doing. Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better...Our country is finally WINNING again!


Yes yes I'm sure all those countries will love being told how much better America is. Honestly I hope they laugh him out of the building.

Some leaders are already getting their shots in before he arrives:

Even Before Trump Arrives, He's The Elephant In The Room At Davos | HuffPost

I dunno how we're supposed to take a 77 year old John Kerry as a serious presidential candidate(again).

He already got to run against a popular vote loser. And lost. No repeats.