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Comment by fzeroracer | Hacker News Reader

I don't see a good off-ramp for the current shutdown, so I think this is going to be a very turbulent couple of weeks (months?) ahead. Republicans have the majority and can't even whip together enough votes for a funding resolution, and Democrats don't want to negotiate because all the Republicans have been doing is threatening them and asking for things that are obvious no-gos. And the moment the shutdown triggered, they've started targeting blue states to tear away more funding arbitrarily so that just ensures people rightfully dig in further.

Guess we'll see how long they keep the hand on an increasingly hot stove.

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> Republicans have the majority and can't even whip together enough votes for a funding resolution

Republicans would have to change the Senate rules which currently require 60 votes, they only have 53 seats. If they changed the rules, it would have passed without the Democrats who voted yes to it yesterday.

Yesterday's vote was 55-45, with 60 needed. Two Democrats and one independent voted for it, with one Republican voting against. Without those three, it was still 52-48. A change to a simple majority vote would have averted the shutdown.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...

They can always involve the nuclear option and kill the filibuster easily. As they have done before in other circumstances. They won't, because they believe the optics of the shutdown is in their favor.

> Republicans would have to change the Senate rules which currently require 60 votes

That's not quite correct. Senate rules are set by simple majority, but the the proposed rule change itself can be filibustered mid-term, except for when someone can exploit procedural rules of cloture to squash it.

Those rules were exploited in 2013 to remove the judicial filibuster and again in 2019 for the Supreme Court. It's called the "nuclear option" for a reason, but the road is already paved.

You've written this twice now and I tried to reply the first time, but you deleted it. That statement is ambiguous, but my "require 60 votes" was meant for the funding bill, as evidenced by my other comments which mention only needing a simple majority to change the rules.

My apologies for the deletion, I didn't like the way I phrased it the first time because what I wrote was too ambiguous and didn't cover the nuances of mid-term rule changes.

That said, I don't see how "would have to change the Senate rules which currently require 60 votes" is ambiguous. The "which" is clearly referring to "change the Senate rules". You just misspoke and I can't be expected to read entirely out of tree replies that you make six minutes before my second comment (which was well after my first deleted comment).

> Democrats don't want to negotiate because all the Republicans have been doing is threatening them and asking for things that are obvious no-gos.

Also probably because Republicans never negotiate in good faith. What is there to negotiate with when you're being called "the enemy from within"?

Right, we're now in reality where the Senate is passing rescissions with a simple majority in addition to the President now doing "pocket rescissions". How do you negotiate in good faith about budget details if anything negotiated can be undone on a whim?

The elephant in the room is the arbitrary impoundments and rescissions that have occurred under this administration. You can’t negotiate with someone who has just ignored previous appropriations bills.

Republicans don't need to negotiate with Democrats. They have a majority and could end the shutdown all on their own if they wanted to.

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