“House Democrats erupted into apoplexy,” Axios reported on March 14, “after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.” With their surrender, Schumer and nine other Senate Democrats enabled passage of a “continuing resolution” that kicked the government’s budget and debt cans down the road yet again, this time through September 30. Schumer’s case for a yes vote was both practical (without the resolution, the federal government would have gone into a fake “shutdown” and its “non-essential” functions would have been shuttered until a deal was reached) and political (Schumer feared that Democrats…
Author: Thomas L. Knapp
So much going on! Will Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency succeed in their supposed quests to shut down everything from USAID to the Department of Education to God knows what else? As the establishment crowd moans and their MAGA crowds rejoice over the sketchy claims of cuts and eliminations, I’m adopting (and strongly suggesting that others adopt) a wait-and-see attitude, a posture of sangfroid rather than swivet or schadenfreude (sorry if you have to look those terms up). Just because someone associated with the government says X, one needn’t, and probably shouldn’t, unquestioningly believe X.…