There isn't a bill on president's desk, because the Speaker of the Senate refuses to allow a vote on any bill that the president claims he won't sign (which includes the bill that Senate has passed originally).

Of course. And what’s stopping Congress from coming together with a compromise bill the President will sign?

Last year we had a bipartisan bill with $25 billion in Wall funding and DACA amnesty. Now he’s asking for $5.7 billion and has said he wants to negotiate.

There is a long, long prescedent of bipartisan negotiation in these matters. The new Speaker of the House has said she will absolutely not negotiate and claims border walls (which we have in spades already) are immoral and racist. Ok then!

Several days ago Donald met with Chuck and Nancy and asked if he signed a CR opening the govt for 30 days, would they take up wall funding and Nancy said No.

There’s nothing stopping either “side” from unilaterally taking a simple step to fully open the government. So logically everyone is to blame.

What, exactly, was stopping congress from coming together to fund the wall before the democrats came into power?

The answer: Absolutely nothing. The reason why they kicked this can down the road was solely for the purpose of using it as political leverage against the democrats. There was literally no excuse for not getting funding for his wall over the past two years. Except to use government employees as hostages.

There is no two sides to blame here. Republicans had the power to do so. They didn't. Now at the 11th hour they want to do it, so they can blame Democrats for not adhering to their outlandish demands.

Actually, they didn’t have the votes in the Senate. They still don’t without bipartisan support.

The funding Donald wanted is now less than the cost of the shutdown. $5.7 billion toward border security is not outlandish. Shutting down the government for 30 days absolutely is outlandish.

Objectively wrong. They HAD the votes in the Senate. There was absolutely nothing stopping them from employing the nuclear option to fund the wall. A simple majority was all they needed.

If they wanted to fund the damn wall, they could've funded it. You're right that shutting down the government for 30 days is outlandish, and it falls squarely on Republicans and Trump.

My understanding is that the so-called “nuclear option” was eliminating the 60-vote threshold only for Federal branch nominees and judicial appointments, not for basic legislation and particularly not the budget.

Eliminating the 60-vote threshold for legislation would destroy a massive part of what makes the Senate the Senate. It is stunningly worse policy than spending $6b on marginally effective border security.

But because Republicans didn’t do that, and Dems won’t vote for even $2 of Wall funding the only blame for the current shutdown is to Republicans. Do I understand your logic correctly?

No, your understanding was wrong. Please read up before you make claims about voting thresholds.

And Republicans have already eliminated said threshold for ramming through a supreme court nomination. I want to get this straight though: Your argument now is that parliamentary procedure was more important for Republicans than building the wall. A wall that they're claiming is a national crisis resulting in widespread issues. Enough of an issue to shut down the government over it.

If the wall was vital, then why didn't they employ the nuclear option (as was backed by Donald Trump, obviously) to build the wall. Why are are they, now that the Democrats are in power, demanding a wall be built?

And yes, the only party to blame for the current shutdown is in fact, Republicans. They had two years to build a wall. They didn't.

My previous statement seems to jive with the Wikipedia on the subject. [1]

I said Federal and judicial appointments. The Supreme Court is a judicial appointment.

Legislation has always been a 60-vote threshold to end debate in the Senate. It’s one of the cornerstones of the Senate.

I wouldn’t say Democrats are “in power” now. They took back the House and lost seats in the Senate. But the fact remains they have always needed Democratic votes to get to 60 in the Senate.

You say they should have voted it through with just 50 in the Senate. Which by the way they don’t want to do even now. I think that would have far worse long-term effects for the country, and many Democrats and Republicans alike agree.

You can obviously believe whatever you like. It’s your opinion, and I’m not trying to change it.

My simple observation was that right now, with the House and Senate that we have, with the rules and procedures that have been in place for centuries, both parties are equally capable of funding the govnernment in less than an hour if they decide they want to do it. It will only cost them ~$6b one way or the other. Either party is indisputably capable of ending the shutdown, but both as of yet have chosen not to.

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option

And my simple observation, one that you seem to keep ignoring, is that they had two years to fund the wall. They had two years of full governmental control to pass a bill which could've allocated all of the funding they wanted for the wall. They could've done it during Reconciliation, they could've invoked the nuclear option, they had multiple opportunities to do so. If you keep reading the wikipedia article you can clearly see that there was nothing stopping them from employing it, outside of a lack of unity on the Republican party side of things.

You're effectively saying that Republicans holding the government hostage instead of employing the nuclear option in the past is far less damaging to the country than if they had lifted the parliamentary procedures. This is also ignoring the fact that there has been bipartisan clean CRs which have been outright denied by the Senate.

Can you explain why it would've been more damaging to the country than the current shutdown? I would like an actual explanation.

Talk about moving the goalposts! No, I don’t have any interest in a nuanced discussion with you around why I think that legislation in the Senate should pass a 60-vote threshold.

Whether or not Republicans could have funded border security Before is an interesting diversion.

Trump actually pushed hard for border security & wall funding the last time the govt was facing a shutdown, and he was convinced to sign a clean CR with the promise that border security would be addressed. It wasn’t.

So this time he has held fast. He is absolutely responsible for holding firm for a bill that has what he wants in it. He could sign a bill today without Wall funding and re-open the government.

Democrats in the House could also pass a bill today with $5.7b in Wall funding and the government would be open again in an hour. You have not disputed this as it’s indisputable.

Both sides are choosing to keep the government shut down.

Tomorrow at 3pm Trump will present yet another compromise proposal. He has at least been standing ready to negotiate this entire time, even through Christmas. He has said what he wants, as it’s a promise he made when he was running for election, and he is obviously willing to trade a lot for it. We’ll see tomorrow what his latest proposal is, and if and when Democrats will come to the table.

A rational negotiator, when the other side says “this is what I need to have” figures out what they need in return. If border fencing is “immoral” or “racist” then we have a lot of walls we better get bulldozing.

At worst Trump is saying he wants to waste $6b dollars on ineffective border measures. Well, by denying that appropriation, House Democrats have burned much, much more than $6 billion by now.

There are things you can ask for that cannot be bartered. He could be asking for a Constitutional Amendment of some sort. He could be asking for certain politicians to resign. He could be asking for actual racist or immoral things.

He’s asking for a border security appropriation to build 230 miles of wall in addition to the 690 miles that already exist. He wants to increase the border fencing by 1/3rd. He’s demanding this because a large number of people voted for him because he said he would do it.

This is something that can be traded for in a functioning democracy. I believe Democrats should put something commensurate on the table that they’re willing to trade for $6b in wall funding.

For example, the next Supreme Court nomination. If Ginsburg knew that Dems could fill her spot, perhaps she would be ready to retire. I think Trump would want $25b in Wall funding in return for that, but it’s within the realm of possibility. I think Dems need to get fucking creative and get to work on solving this, versus assuming a fake BuzzFeed scoop is going to solve their problem for them, or continue to play the optics as if the shutdown is good for Dems.

The last time the Dems played ball, it was around DACA. Trump and Republicans promised to fix DACA if the Dems agreed to some of their demands. The Govt shut down, Dems were somehow blamed for this despite a republican majority, and the end result was a bill [1] that gave Trump some of what he wanted, including border security funding. Then DACA never was put on the table because naturally, that's how they negotiate.

Acting like Trump is a rational negotiator is delusional. Why should the Dems ever bother listening to his demands when last time they negotiated, he backed out of the deal? And you're objectively wrong, again, on it being a clean CR.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Appropriations_...

That is a clean CR in my opinion. No DACA and no new border wall. $1.6 billion for existing fencing and planning is status quo, not what Trump wanted, and certainly not worth any kind of quid pro quo amnesty.

I don’t think either side is a particularly good faith negotiator, but it’s totally beside the original point I made which you refuse to debate while continuously smoke screening with side shows.

You refuse to admit that the way the Senate has done legislative business for its entire history is at odds with your “despite a Republican majority” rhetoric. A Replublican majority is not sufficient to stop a Democratic philibuster in the Senate. That’s how the Senate works. If one party with at least 40 seats decides to filibuster, then they are responsible for the bill not passing. That is exactly how it has always worked in the Senate and any good faith debater would accept that the party filibustering is the party responsible for stopping the bill from going to the President’s desk, in that case, causing a shutdown.

I mean, if you blame Republicans for the Jan 2018 shutdown where Senate democrats were damanding a permanent DACA fix, and then relented, you know even the NYT disagrees with you [1];

Congress brought an end to a three-day government shutdown on Monday as Senate Democrats buckled under pressure to adopt a short-term spending bill to fund government operations without first addressing the fate of young undocumented immigrants.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/us/politics/congress-vote...

Budgets can pass through reconciliation with 50 votes.

There's a very simple way to determine who is responsible for the shutdown: look at who is passing the bills to fund everyday workings of the government, and who is refusing to advance them without their riders.

What if I believe he’s a foreign agent with lots of evidence?

The FBI would sure be interested in talking with you, for starters.

Thankfully what I know is all public knowledge, so they can stick to talking to all of his criminal underlings and associates.

> Strange, last I checked there isn’t a bill on the President’s desk.

There isn't a bill on his desk because McConnell won't let it happen because Trump won't sign it. Your reading of this situation is incredibly simplified. Trump by virtue of McConnell is absolutely a big reason why we are in a shutdown.