#GOPShutdown

What do you call it when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House?  You SHOULD be able to call it legislative carte blanche - the ability to do whatever that party wants to do.  Instead, we’re calling it the #GOPShutdown.

First, here’s a simple way to explain the shutdown:
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• ​Pretend the Senate is a restaurant and  Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) is the waiter.
• Chuck Schumer (Senate Minority Leader) and friends sit down and order scrambled eggs.
• McConnell says "No. Everyone gets poached eggs and those brown people over there have to eat poison, or no one gets breakfast."
• Schumer says "We want scrambled eggs, and NO ONE is eating poison."
• McConnell then starts yelling "THE DEMOCRATS WON'T LET ANYONE HAVE BREAKFAST!!!"
• And no one gets to eat.

There is no reason for the government to be shut down.  We should have a budget bill that takes us through the fiscal year.  We don’t.  We’ve had a series of Continuing Resolutions (CRs) for the last 9 years.  The one that failed Friday night was only a 4 week extension.  Now they are trying to put together something for as little as 3-4 days.  This is like trying to handle your household finances via payday loans.

Backstory:  How did we get here?

• CHIP funding expired in September.  Four months ago.  There was a bipartisan bill to continue CHIP funding but the Republicans held it back while they took another shot at repealing Obamacare (that failed), then rammed the #GOPTaxScam through before the end of the year.  The Republican talking point that the Democrats are not funding CHIP is not true.
• Trump ended DACA in September.  An average of 122 Dreamers lose their DACA protections every day.  The Republican talking point that DACA is not in imminent danger is false.
• Democrats agreed to more time for negotiation in September, again on December 9, and again on December 22.  There was a  bipartisan agreement to avert this shutdown, and Trump said he would sign whatever Congress gave him.  Then Trump and some of his allies in Congress blew that up on Jan 11 (remember the racist s-hole comment?).   
• Last Friday the House passed a very narrow spending bill that included six years of funding for CHIP but did not include DACA legislation.  The Senate took up the same bill and could not even get all of the Republicans to vote for it.  Several Democrats did, and several Republicans did not.  Time ran out and now large parts of the federal government are shut down.
  
  

There is a bipartisan bill that would get up to 70 votes in the Senate.  Mitch McConnell will not bring this bill up for a vote.  There have been motions to allow the military to be paid during the shutdown, and McConnell will not allow a vote.

Republicans control all three branches of government.  The shutdown belongs to the Republican party.  Republicans must make a choice: Honor the bipartisan agreement between Republicans and Democrats to end the shutdown or stand with Trump and the most racist voices in our country and keep the government shut down.

How to Respond to GOP Talking Points  (via Indivisible Guide)

1.     Democrats are shutting the government down to give amnesty to illegal immigrants.

• FALSE.
• Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House but they have not put forward legislation to fund the government that can pass both chambers of Congress. It is their obligation to keep the government running.
• DACA is not unchecked illegal immigration.  DACA recipients are lawfully present -- they are children who have lived in America for years, in many cases their entire lives.  They were here lawfully under a government program that grants them lawfully present status until Donald Trump unilaterally ended it.

2.     Democrats are hurting our military.

• FALSE.
• Republicans want to throw even more money at the Pentagon -- so much more money, that they’d need a new agreement in Congress to do it (because of  the sequester caps that Republicans themselves imposed some years ago).  Our existing military is not underfunded. It is not underprepared. Republicans want the CR to allow even more bloated spending to flow to the Pentagon and they’re not getting their way -- but that is a very different story from “Democrats are hurting the military.”   
• Military personnel have always received back pay for any lost salary during a government shutdown.
• Multiple Senate Democrats have attempted to advance language specifying that service members will get paid during any shutdown, but Mitch McConnell has objected and kept these measures from getting a vote.

3.     Democrats are holding up CHIP.
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• FALSE.
• CHIP funding expired at the end of September. Republicans have used CHIP as a political bargaining tool since then. Even though there is bipartisan support for extending CHIP for ten years, Republicans put a shorter six year reauthorization -- paired with repeal of certain Affordable Care Act provisions -- into the proposed CR to try to pit CHIP and Dream against each other, dividing Democrats. If anyone is holding up CHIP funding, it’s the Republicans that control Congress and the White House that could have extended funding months ago.

4.     DACA is not an imminent issue. We have until March.

• FALSE.  
• An average of 122 Dreamers lose their protection from deportation everyday.  Over 16,000 Dreamers have lost protection  since Trump unilaterally ended DACA in September.   We need to protect Dreamers now. Plus, this Republican Congress has a habit of missing deadlines and not honoring promises to deal with issues later (ask Senators Flake and Collins!) so Congress must do this now.

5.     Democrats are closing the national parks and hurting federal employees.”

• FALSE.
• The Republicans shut down the government and refuse to allow a vote on a bipartisan blll that can pass. Yes, some national parks will close for as long as Republicans fail to re-open the government, but some are still open and unstaffed (which is arguably worse!).  
• Federal employees have always received back pay for any lost salary during a government shutdown. If they do not receive back pay this time, it is because the Republicans won’t vote for it.
• Finally, Republicans have demonized federal employees for years -- consistently proposing pay freezes, pay cuts, and the drastic cuts to the workforce.  Any newfound concern they have for our federal workforce is a disingenuous fabrication.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

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