Mitch McConnell made it clear on Monday that the Republican would NOT budge on raising the debt ceiling limit and passing a new budget bill, which means that we are headed towards a government shutdown at the end of the day on Thursday.
The only reason McConnell is taking this stance is because Democrats are in charge and he wants to hurt them politically.
The debt ceiling was raised 3 separate times during the Trump administration, including once so that they could pay for their tax cuts for the wealthy.
Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.
Link - www.huffpost.com/entry/debt-limit-default-republicans_n_6151de24e4b03d83bad65371
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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Thanks to the Republicans in the United States Senate, the federal government is officially going to shut down on Thursday at 11:59 PM.
They voted yesterday to not raise the debt ceiling limit and to not approve a Democratic approved budget and therefore, without any other funding mechanisms coming into play between now and Thursday evening, the government is set to shut down at the end of the day on Thursday.
Now Mitch McConnell made it clear on Monday before the vote even took place that this is what was going to happen.
Now, if you'll recall last week, he actually told the press that the Democrats needed to stop playing games and raise the debt ceiling and pass a budget.
He actually said that last week.
And then he also said in almost the same breath that Republicans are gonna block it.
Monday, Monday morning, he reaffirmed that yes, Republicans are going to block these things that we told Democrats they needed to do.
And then of course the vote came, by 48 to 50.
So you had two Democratic senators who I guess didn't vote, I think.
But anyway, 48 to 50 doesn't matter the split there, it was blocked.
So there's no funding mechanism.
So what we're going to see over the next 48 hours is a mad scramble by Democrats, possibly even some Republicans to get the funding they need to raise the debt ceiling at least a little bit so that the government does not shut down in the middle of a pandemic and an economic slowdown.
The results of this could be more devastating than any of the other government shutdowns we have witnessed in recent years because of those two facts.
Right.
Because we're still in a pandemic because the economy is no longer growing at that rapid pace that we had seen just a few months ago.
Things are slowing down.
People are going to get screwed, but that's the point for Mitch McConnell and his Republican party.
That's why this is happening.
That's not a consequence of it.
That is the effect that Mitch McConnell wanted to have because anytime the government gets shut down, the party in power obviously gets blamed for it.
And usually rightfully so, right? The only difference here is that with an evenly divided Senate, 50 50, no party can really do anything if they don't have 100% of their members on board.
Plus typically one, at least from the other party, we didn't get that with this, 48 50.
Mitch McConnell prevailed.
Mitch McConnell did this.
But the Democrats are going to take the blame for it.
And that is exactly how Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans are going to frame this.
The Democrats are in charge.
They have, you know, the majority in the Senate, even though they don't really have a majority in the Senate.
They have the majority in the House.
They have the White House.
They shut down the government.
Folks, is this what you want? You want these Democrats shutting down the government in the middle of a pandemic?
That's going to be the messaging moving forward.
We're going to hear that on Fox.
We're going to hear it on Newsmax.
We're going to hear it from all of these idiot conservative pundits on social media.
They're going to blame this on the Democrats.
So the question is, what are the Democrats going to do about it? I don't have an answer to that.
