Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

[The Romulan Republic]

Trump is the kind of leader who fleeces the country and lives in luxury while the peasants starve.

We're fortunate that we still have some legal and democratic institutions that don't answer to the President, because in countries without such mechanisms, such leaders tend to end up getting violently deposed by an angry mob, or devolving into a lengthy civil war.

[Flagg]

The Hill

Secret Service has spent $35,000 on golf cart rentals since inauguration: report
BY BROOKE SEIPEL - 04/14/17 08:06 PM EDT 659
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Secret Service has spent $35,000 on golf cart rentals since inauguration: report
© Getty Images
The Secret Service has spent more than $35,000 on golf cart rentals at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort since his inauguration, CBS News reported Friday, as Trump begins another weekend in Florida.

CBS News reported that it had reviewed purchase orders showing $35,185 in costs for renting golf carts during Trump's frequent visits to Palm Beach, Fla.

The president has played several rounds of golf at Trump-branded clubs, including in Florida and Virginia.


Trump has come under fire for his frequent trips, which current estimates show have cost more than $20 million — nearly the amount President Obama spent on travel in his first two years combined. Obama spent approximately $97 million on travel, averaging $12.12 million per year in office.
CBS' new report comes as Trump spends the full three-day Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago. No senior staff took the Air Force One flight to Florida, according to a report.

Because hey, as long as Trump is spending millions of taxpayer money to go to his hotel, he might as well make some relative pocket change for the Secret Service to do their jobs.

Remember how he was always going on about Obama occasionally golfing on the campaign trail? I guess it's OK as long as he flies to his golf resort pumping taxpayer money into it (like he pumps himself into unwilling women) every weekend. But maybe he can bomb some more dirt in Syria and give the slavish whores Beltway Media erections to boost his poll numbers by a few percent.

[FaxModem1]

The Week

The State Department is apparently spending money to officially promote Mar-a-Lago
2:43 p.m. ET

Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The United States embassy in the U.K. is apparently promoting President Trump's "winter White House" on its official webpage, sparking renewed concerns about Trump's potential conflicts of interest. "Trump is not the first president to have access to Mar-a-Lago as a Florida retreat, but he is the first one to use it," reads the article, which was originally published on ShareAmerica, the Department of State's "platform for sharing compelling stories and images that spark discussion and debate on important topics like democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society."

"By visiting this 'winter White House,' Trump is belatedly fulfilling the dream of Mar-a-Lago's original owner and designer," the article goes on, claiming its builder, Marjorie Merriweather Post, "willed the estate to the U.S. government, intending it to be used as a winter White House for the U.S. president to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries."

Hillary Clinton's former national spokesman, Josh Schwerin, criticized the webpage on Twitter: "The State Department is spending money to promote Mar-a-Lago," he tweeted. "Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in [West Virginia] or a single mom in Detroit to pay for promoting Mar-a-Lago?"

The Mar-a-Lago club's initiation fee doubled to $200,000 after Trump was elected, and Trump's frequent visits have been criticized as a potential conflict of interest by many observers. "Trump has an incentive to host an event at Mar-a-Lago (personal financial gain) that runs directly counter to what would be best for the country's security (hosting the event at the White House or an otherwise secure location)," writes The Atlantic. "Not only that, part of the appeal of Mar-a-Lago is that guests will have a front-row ticket to see Trump at work." Jeva Lange

Isn't this a violation of the Constitution?

[Gandalf]

Isn't this a violation of the Constitution?

Probably. Does it matter?

The odds against him getting done for this are minimal, so there's no real need to follow the laws.

[Flagg]

The Week

The State Department is apparently spending money to officially promote Mar-a-Lago
2:43 p.m. ET

Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The United States embassy in the U.K. is apparently promoting President Trump's "winter White House" on its official webpage, sparking renewed concerns about Trump's potential conflicts of interest. "Trump is not the first president to have access to Mar-a-Lago as a Florida retreat, but he is the first one to use it," reads the article, which was originally published on ShareAmerica, the Department of State's "platform for sharing compelling stories and images that spark discussion and debate on important topics like democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society."

"By visiting this 'winter White House,' Trump is belatedly fulfilling the dream of Mar-a-Lago's original owner and designer," the article goes on, claiming its builder, Marjorie Merriweather Post, "willed the estate to the U.S. government, intending it to be used as a winter White House for the U.S. president to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries."

Hillary Clinton's former national spokesman, Josh Schwerin, criticized the webpage on Twitter: "The State Department is spending money to promote Mar-a-Lago," he tweeted. "Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in [West Virginia] or a single mom in Detroit to pay for promoting Mar-a-Lago?"

The Mar-a-Lago club's initiation fee doubled to $200,000 after Trump was elected, and Trump's frequent visits have been criticized as a potential conflict of interest by many observers. "Trump has an incentive to host an event at Mar-a-Lago (personal financial gain) that runs directly counter to what would be best for the country's security (hosting the event at the White House or an otherwise secure location)," writes The Atlantic. "Not only that, part of the appeal of Mar-a-Lago is that guests will have a front-row ticket to see Trump at work." Jeva Lange

Isn't this a violation of the Constitution?

I bet indictments are coming any day!

But I have no idea if it violates the US Constitution, but I bet it breaks a fuckton of ethics rules if not laws. But even if someone dropped a house on Congress and somehow Dems got largish majorities, I doubt they would do much more than whine for a special prosecutor that I doubt they would get.

[Simon_Jester]

And the hell of it is...

How do you ever, EVER enforce anti-corruption laws after shit like this, if you don't enforce it against Trumpolini? How do you say to a guy who takes a quarter of a million dollars in bribes to vote on legislation that he can't do that, after The Donald spends years milking the federal budget for an eight (maybe even nine) figure sum of money?

I have people telling me "well, I can sympathize with wanting to vote for Trump because he can't be bought by anyone else because of how much money he has." And I see shit like this and I think that this may well permanently shift American politics a couple of notches closer to 'kleptocracy.' Because gee, it turns out guys who are this rich got this rich by shoveling money into their pants whenever they see an opportunity. Who knew?

[Civil War Man]

And the hell of it is...

How do you ever, EVER enforce anti-corruption laws after shit like this, if you don't enforce it against Trumpolini? How do you say to a guy who takes a quarter of a million dollars in bribes to vote on legislation that he can't do that, after The Donald spends years milking the federal budget for an eight (maybe even nine) figure sum of money?

I have people telling me "well, I can sympathize with wanting to vote for Trump because he can't be bought by anyone else because of how much money he has." And I see shit like this and I think that this may well permanently shift American politics a couple of notches closer to 'kleptocracy.' Because gee, it turns out guys who are this rich got this rich by shoveling money into their pants whenever they see an opportunity. Who knew?

It actually gets worse.

For all the screwed up things about the US government, it has actually historically had a reputation for being one of the better countries out there in terms of fighting corruption, both in having good anti-corruption laws and a decent track record in enforcing them. For a long time, the US was a role-model for third world countries trying to rein in corruption in their government, and often would work with them in order to help accomplish this.

This reputation had been getting weaker due to things like Citizens United, but Trump's election basically turned everything on its head, to the point where the very idea of the US being a leader in fighting corruption is laughable. So it's not just that the US is becoming closer to a kleptocracy, but that it could actually cause an explosion of government corruption on a global scale.

For reference: Donald Trump Is Making the United States an Anti-Corruption Laughingstock

Jessica Tillipman, a dean at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on government ethics and compliance, was recently giving an anti-corruption training to a roomful of visiting government officials from Latin America when something odd happened. As she described measures the United States has in place to guard against conflicts of interest, she heard snickering.

"Usually, I would see audiences in the past where they would look on kind of in awe" at the elaborate system the federal government has in place to prevent graft and corruption, Tillipman says. That has changed since the election of Donald Trump. Now, the overseas officials she trains point out that the United States can't even get its own president to abide by the nation's ethics standards and traditions. "It was almost a bit of a joke," she says of the recent training. "To have countries with their own distinct corruption issues laughing at our current issues—it's embarrassing."

For decades, the United States has held itself up as a paragon of open and ethical government. On many fronts, the country has led by example, enacting tough anti-corruption and ethics statutes and leading the world in the enforcement of those laws. What's more, the United States has used its reputation to prod other countries to clean up their acts, spending tens of millions of dollars every year via various federal programs to educate and train foreign officials and to encourage the passage of anti-bribery and transparency measures. But interviews with more than a dozen US and foreign experts show that the nation is losing its credibility as the world leader in clean government and fighting corruption, which is in turn affecting global efforts to combat government corruption.

Since his election, Trump and his administration have taken an openly hostile approach to guarding against conflicts and policing ethics standards. Trump and the Republican-led Congress have already rolled back efforts by the Obama administration to combat bribery and graft in the oil and gas industry. And there are indications that Trump may weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the crown jewel of US anti-corruption laws that makes it illegal for an American company to pay off—knowingly or unknowingly—a foreign government official for preferential treatment.

"It's hard to put lipstick on the pig: There's a very, very different perceived reputation now than three or four months ago," says Nathaniel Heller, an executive with Results for Development, a nonprofit that fights poverty, partly by encouraging government transparency. "It's particularly acute because of the very real conflicts of interest and entanglements that the [Trump] family and administration seem to be deeply uninterested in trying to untangle."

Jorge Hage, the former anti-corruption minister of Brazil, says the United States' actions so far send "a very bad signal" to international partners. "Everyone seems to know (or hope) that the present administration is an exception, kind of an accident," Hage says, "so that sooner or later, the US will go back to its traditional policy of promoting and emphasizing public integrity and transparency, and fighting corruption."

Trump, unlike every other president in the modern era, has taken a dismissive approach to resolving potential ethics problems and conflicts of interest. He has refused to divest from his international real estate and licensing company, which means he will continue to enrich himself from his business while president. He hired two members of his immediate family—his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner—to work in the White House. Senior staffers in the Trump administration skipped a customary ethics training course, which may help explain why aides to the president have on numerous occasions promoted the Trump family's business interests in their official capacities.

In early January, hours after Trump said at a press conference he wouldn't be taking the steps recommended by most ethics experts to avoid conflicts, the federal government's top ethics watchdog pleaded with Trump to reconsider. If Trump failed to personally uphold a high standard, the ripples of that decision would be felt around the world, noted Walter Shaub, director of the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics. "As we all know, one of the things that make America truly great is its system for preventing public corruption," Shaub said in a rare public speech. "Our executive branch ethics program is considered the gold standard internationally and has served as a model for the world. But that program starts with the Office of the President. The president-elect must show those in government—and those coming into government after his inauguration—that ethics matters."

Convincing lawmakers in corruption-plagued countries to change their laws—and asking prosecutors and law enforcement officials to have the courage to enforce those laws—is a tough enough sell, says Shruti Shah, vice president of programming and operations at the Coalition for Integrity, formerly the US chapter of Transparency International. Having a president who seems blithely unconcerned about his myriad conflicts of interest doesn't help, she says. "We can't tell people in Africa or anywhere else in the world to do anything we're not doing ourselves."

Foreign partners are scratching their heads at the way Trump has casually ignored concerns over conflicts of interest and his international business partners, she says. "It's very difficult to explain to even anti-corruption activists that we do have these laws and they apply to members of Congress and people on the state level, but not the president," Shah says.

All of this is a marked departure from Trump's predecessor. While Barack Obama refused to even refinance his home mortgage out of concern that he would be accused of having a conflict of interest with the new lender, Trump entered office with more than $713 million in debt, much of it borrowed from banks that have clashed with federal regulators. The Obama administration was the first to publish the visitor logs that revealed the identities of most visitors to the White House. The Trump White House has yet to say if it will continue the practice. (Three open-government groups recently sued the administration over its refusal to release the visitor logs.)

The Obama administration supported the Cardin-Lugar provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, a measure that would require oil and gas companies to publish their payments to foreign governments. Shortly after Trump's inauguration, the Republican-led Congress voted to repeal the regulations enacting the Cardin-Lugar provision, which was set to go into effect sometime in the next year. The Trump White House issued a statement of administration policy supporting the repeal, and Trump later signed the bill into law on February 14.

And the Obama administration agreed to join the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), an effort to ramp up transparency of the money governments receive from oil and gas companies and to better track payments to combat rampant corruption in countries suffering from the so-called resource curse. Trump's Department of Interior, meanwhile, has sent strong signals that it is backing away from the EITI, informing domestic participants that it was canceling all future meetings with civil-society and industry representatives involved in the effort. "They called and told us they were cancelling the meetings," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight and the co-chair of an EITI committee. A spokeswoman for the Interior Department disputed that the agency planned to exit EITI, saying that the United States "remains a strong supporter" but that "no decision has been made" about future implementation of the initiative.

The Obama administration also led in the creation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a network of governments and civil-society groups that worked on promoting transparency and accountability. Jeremy Weinstein, a former National Security Council member and senior diplomatic aide under Obama who helped launch OGP, told Mother Jones that the effort was a departure from prior presidencies because the United States had committed to making changes of its own while pressuring other countries to improve their policies. "As we began, when we arrived in 2009, to think about how to position the US for leadership, we were thinking about how to make up for some lost ground for our own practices," Weinstein says. "To be an effective leader on these issues internationally, we need to be an effective leader domestically." OGP launched in 2011, and since then the United States has produced three reports to the group outlining various domestic reforms, among them joining the EITI.

The Trump administration has yet to say whether it will continue working with OGP. (An official with the group says it has yet to hear from any Trump officials.) Not helping matters is the slow pace of staffing inside the administration: Undersecretary positions overseeing anti-corruption work at the State Department and the Treasury Department have yet to be filled.

At recent open-government conferences and meetings around the world, a question hangs over the proceedings: What's going on in the United States? "It just sends a terrible message to countries that are trying to improve their governance," says Dan Dudis with the good-government organization Public Citizen. "It takes the pressure off them [knowing] they're not going to have the US State Department breathing down their neck to improve governance."

The budget outline released by the administration proposes deep cuts to agencies that work on and fund open-government programs. It includes no specifics, but the outline calls for a 28 percent budget reduction at the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agencies that oversee many of the government's international anti-corruption efforts.

A diverse range of anti-corruption and pro-transparency projects around the globe are supported by the US government—so many programs from so many different agencies it's difficult to tabulate a total. For example, since February, USAID directed $3 million to an ongoing anti-corruption effort in Jamaica, $972,000 to an anti-corruption effort in Ghana, and $634,000 for a program to fight corruption in the health care system of Albania. Since Trump's inauguration, USAID has granted money to local chapters of international good-governance group Transparency International in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The latter is a country considered one of the world's most corrupt, where Trump partnered with the family of an Azeri oligarch to brand a hotel. (The deal collapsed, but questions remain about how much the Trump Organization knew about its business partners.)

More direct anti-corruption programs are funded through the Department of Justice, which in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise in international narco-crime syndicates, created the Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training (OPDAT). The program, which has offices in 50 countries, trains prosecutors and law enforcement around the world to spot and stop money-laundering, smuggling, and corruption. Among OPDAT's more high-profile areas of work is an effort to fight corruption in Ukraine.

The DOJ—which also maintains an anti-kleptocracy unit to identify and recover assets from corrupt foreign leaders—is slated for a 4 percent budget cut ($700 million) under Trump's proposed budget. Where those cuts will come is not clear, but the administration's outline makes it clear that domestic programs to support a crackdown on immigration take priority in the agency while the cuts will come from unnamed "outdated programs."

Some experts fear the Trump administration's long-term goal may be to curb enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, if not neuter the law. The DOJ under Obama opened more FCPA cases than all prior administrations combined since 1977, the year the law was enacted. But Trump has for years expressed hostility toward the FCPA, saying the law puts American businesses at a "huge disadvantage" and that it was a "horrible law and it should be changed." Part of Trump's animosity might stem from his own experiences trying to take his brand global—a New Yorker investigation published in March found that the Trump Organization had potentially violated the FCPA as part of a development deal in Azerbaijan. (A company lawyer dismissed this claim.)

Trump's picks to run the two agencies that spearhead FCPA cases, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, don't inspire confidence. His choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, a corporate lawyer named Jay Clayton, chaired a New York Bar Association committee that released a white paper in 2012 calling the United States' current enforcement of the law "unilateral and zealous" and recommending "the reevaluation of the United States' strategy in fighting foreign corruption." Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, pledged during his confirmation hearings to uphold the FCPA, but some experts fear that budget cuts could still weaken enforcement even if the law is kept in place. "I would never question the integrity of the people who are pursuing these cases…but you can cut a budget," says Chris Sanders, a spokesman for Transparency International. "You can reduce the numbers of investigators."

Mary Beth Goodman, a former National Security Council member and anti-corruption expert under Obama, says US leadership on the issues of transparency and anti-corruption cuts both ways. If the United States commits to raising the bar on transparency and ethical standards, other countries feel compelled to follow. But if the United States all but abandons the fight, that signal could set off a race to the bottom around the world. "Very little gets done without US leadership," Goodman says. "If we aren't there constantly being the ones calling some of this action out and leading by example, it's not going to continue to make progress."

[The Romulan Republic]

And the hell of it is...

How do you ever, EVER enforce anti-corruption laws after shit like this, if you don't enforce it against Trumpolini? How do you say to a guy who takes a quarter of a million dollars in bribes to vote on legislation that he can't do that, after The Donald spends years milking the federal budget for an eight (maybe even nine) figure sum of money?

I have people telling me "well, I can sympathize with wanting to vote for Trump because he can't be bought by anyone else because of how much money he has." And I see shit like this and I think that this may well permanently shift American politics a couple of notches closer to 'kleptocracy.' Because gee, it turns out guys who are this rich got this rich by shoveling money into their pants whenever they see an opportunity. Who knew?

This, perhaps above all else, is why it is essential not only that he be impeached, but that he and as many of his cronies as possible be prosecuted. Because normalizing this shit is catastrophic, and the only way to correct the damage is to make an example of these motherfuckers.

If course, if it looks like an impeachment is coming, he'll probably just pardon himself. Or try to cut a deal where he resigns and gets pardoned by Pence, Nixon-style.

That, and the message it would send, are among my biggest fears. Honestly, if Trump uses the pardon to weasel out of prosecution... I'm sure you all know my opposition to political violence, but at the same time, I cannot help but be reminded of a quote from Sherlock Holmes:

"I think that there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge." And if I can think it, others would want to act on it. And that too would set a terrible precedent.

If nothing else, such an eventuality would be enough to make me support a constitutional amendment to abolish the pardon power.

[Khaat]

If it came to impeachment and self- (or Pence-) pardoning of Trump, he'd be publicly finished anyway. Except for those folks who are still convinced Obama "destroyed this country for 8 years (by having the impudence of being a black man in the White House [it's right there in the name!])."

Speaking of, any time, Congress: Trump has done lasting harm not only to the integrity of the Office of the POTUS, but the character of the United States and our allies. If that isn't "high crimes and misdemeanors" yet, do you really want to see how far he takes it?

[Simon_Jester]

Damaging the character and reputation of the US government is NOT an impeachable offense. I'm sorry, but I have to draw lines where they belong.

Massive corruption and enriching oneself at the public expense, now THAT is an impeachable offense, or damn well ought to be.

[Lord Revan]

Yeah I have to agree that "damaging the reputation and character of the goverment" cannot (or at least shouldn't be) an impeachble offense in and of itself, most obviously because it's so vague that it could mean anything and is practically begging to be abused as a way to select the "right" president without elections. That said it could be used as way to "empower" one's case for an actual impeachble offense say for example "president was caught in massive corruption scandal and because of this the reputation and character of the goverment had suffered".

[Khaat]

Damaging the character and reputation of the US government is NOT an impeachable offense. I'm sorry, but I have to draw lines where they belong.

Massive corruption and enriching oneself at the public expense, now THAT is an impeachable offense, or damn well ought to be.

Anyone paying attention knows the means by which the damage has been done. I'm not drafting the legal motion here, I'm saying there's plenty to go on already.

"Conduct unbecoming" may not be in the POTUS's Code of Conduct (because there isn't one) as an offense, short of the rather open language granted under impeachment powers of Congress.

[Simon_Jester]

Even as rhetoric I don't like using phrases like "damaging the reputation of the government" or "conduct unbecoming."

One of the things that has given the US such a long run of orderly, stable constitutional government* is because we don't habitually try to throw politicians out of office using impeachment and similar proceedings as a tool of character assassination, via trumped-up charges. Arguably things have gotten worse in the past few decades precisely because the Republicans did try this maneuver under Clinton, and notably they were afraid to try it again under Obama.

The more both sides double down on this mindset, amplify and enable it, the worse things are going to get, and the more likely we are to have a future constitutional crisis that results in a breakdown of the peaceful transfer of power. Once you get used to the idea that offenses which are by nature subjective (what constitutes 'conduct unbecoming?') are grounds to throw someone out of office, there is a much higher tendency to use such accusations as weapons of political warfare.

It is sufficient to convict a man of things like corruption. Things that are obviously, in and of themselves, abuses of public office. If the reason why such things are bad needs to be explained, that's grounds for a civics lesson, but there's no special need to "add to the charge sheet" extra rhetoric about why it's bad for presidents to milk the federal treasury for their personal enrichment.
_______________________

*Even if it's endangered now, that's still coming at the end of a period of roughly 230 years. Very few countries manage to go this long at a stretch without a major constitutional crisis disrupting the central government and delegitimizing it or at least threatening its legitimacy. Even during the Civil War, the US government never had that problem; individual provinces seceded, but the loyal states and the federal government stuck with the program. Continuity of government was maintained.

[Khaat]

I'm at a tipping point (emotional winning over rational) because the day-to-day operation of the current administration strains all credibility. The POTUS isn't a CEO (seriously, did no one tell him this?), and the Federal Government isn't a corporation ripe for corporate raiding. Except they're doing their best to make it so. They are dismantling the mechanisms of the "leading nation of the free world" for a buck.

I read you, Simon, I get it. Just having a rough time.

[Flagg]

Damaging the character and reputation of the US government is NOT an impeachable offense. I'm sorry, but I have to draw lines where they belong.

Yeah, suggesting that a POTUS who is a laughingstock overseas or viewed as a jackass everywhere they go is guilty of fucking treason is not just out there, it's so fucking ridiculously stupid that the insults I'm not going to post write themselves. I mean I have binders full of women typing them out now.

Massive corruption and enriching oneself at the public expense, now THAT is an impeachable offense, or damn well ought to be.

That's why in all seriousness I actually find the suggestion made by Khaat almost dangerous in that it cheapens the fact that we have a severely anti-social political "empty suit" serving as the executive and commander in chief of the America's armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, who is so clearly out of his depth.

[FaxModem1]

Let's talk government shutdown: Business Insider

Trump says he won't 'give billions' to Democrats in Obamacare funding to avoid a government shutdown

Bob Bryan

Donald Trump and Barack Obama
Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Win McNamee/Getty Images
With a little less than 48 hours to go until the bill funding the federal government expires, lawmakers are scrambling to come up with a plan to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.

The spending bill, however, will likely be a source of horse-trading as Democrats and Republicans attempt to fit their own political goals in the package.

One of the biggest desires of Democrats was to include funding for a key part of Obamacare, called cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, into the new continuing resolution.

Republicans would rather leave these payments out, as they would likely take a toll on Obamacare's individual insurance market and are an added expenditure.

CSR payments go to insurers to help defray the cost of offering plans to low-income Americans . Without the roughly $8 billion in annual payments, many health-policy experts have said the marketplaces would see a flood of insurer exits and steeper price increases for Americans getting insurance through the marketplaces.


Currently, these payments are being made by the White House instead of Congressional appropriation. Politico reported on Wednesday that the White House agreed to continue to fund the CSR payments as it has been doing, apparently clearing the way for a deal on the shutdown.

Democratic sources told Politico, however, that the White House had not committed to funding the CSR payments past next month, which may hang up the preliminary agreement between the White House and Democratic leaders.

Additionally, a Democratic aide told Business Insider later on Wednesday that Democrats "still hope to secure language in the omnibus to continue the payments" but was not able to predict the outcome of the debate.

On Thursday, Trump stoked the flames that the CSR debate may not be over, tweeting, "The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!"

This echoed a nearly identical tweet on Wednesday night.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also pushed back on the inclusion of CSRs at a press conference on Wednesday, saying that the bill would not include these payments. "CSRs, we're not doing that," Ryan said.

Technically, due to Republicans' solid majority in the House, they do not need Democratic votes to pass the bill through the lower chamber, but Democrats could filibuster any legislation in the Senate. Thus, Democrats have some leverage to try and get the CSR payments included.

The trouble with a short-term commitment from the White House is that CSR payments are the subject of a lawsuit between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Department of Health and Human Services that dates back to the Obama administration.

The House argued the program was illegal since the funds were not appropriated by Congress. A judge ruled in Congress' favor in 2016, but an appeal started by the Obama administration is still pending.

What is not clear, however, is whether the Trump administration will continue with the lawsuit. If the lawsuit is dropped by the administration, the lower court ruling would stand and this would effectively end the CSR payments.

Getting the CSR payments in the spending bill would be one way around the legal concerns of the lawsuit since they would be officially appropriated.

With about a day and a half to go, will we have a budget, or a government shutdown?

[Khaat]

There will be some scramble to avoid "Government Shut-Down as Trump's 100 Days Crown-jewel!" headlines.

[Flagg]

See, if one party has all the power and they can't keep the government running, that is the type of shit that should be covered as seriously as wasting millions of dollars in cruise missiles making craters in and around an airfield in Syria. But I can almost guarantee you that the Beltway "Journalists" will somehow use some inconsequential bullshit dredged up so they can spend the weekend diminishing and downplaying the fact that within the first 100 days of being inaugurated, President Pussygrabber, Eddie Munster, and Mitch McCuntal should be in Federal Custody for sodomizing a dog while attempting to run a Country.

[Ralin]

With about a day and a half to go, will we have a budget, or a government shutdown?

Well let's see, that would require the Democrats to have a spine, so...

[Flagg]

With about a day and a half to go, will we have a budget, or a government shutdown?

Well let's see, that would require the Democrats to have a spine, so...

How is that? The Republicans have the entire government. The Democrats can just lie and say Mitch the Turtle threatened another "nuke" if they filibustered.

[The Romulan Republic]

Are the Republicans actually in lock-step in support of Dickless's budget? The health care bill failed because it lacked anything like unanimous support. Could something similar happen here?

[Ralin]

With about a day and a half to go, will we have a budget, or a government shutdown?

Well let's see, that would require the Democrats to have a spine, so...

How is that? The Republicans have the entire government. The Democrats can just lie and say Mitch the Turtle threatened another "nuke" if they filibustered.

I meant forcing a government shutdown. Or am I misunderstanding you?

[Flagg]

Well let's see, that would require the Democrats to have a spine, so...

How is that? The Republicans have the entire government. The Democrats can just lie and say Mitch the Turtle threatened another "nuke" if they filibustered.

I meant forcing a government shutdown. Or am I misunderstanding you?

Oh, I thought you meant the Democrats should prevent one.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm of two minds about a government shut down.

On the one hand, it would hurt a lot of innocent people, and a lot of genuinely important functions of government, and could reflect badly on the Democrats (although the Republicans payed no real political price for causing one on multiple occasions).

On the other hand, Trump's budget will also screw a lot of innocent people, damage a lot of important functions of government, over a much longer term, and fuck just rolling over for him.

So yeah, on balance, I'd have to say that against someone like Trump and his cohorts, the Democrats should obstruct and damn the consequences.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, obstruct up to the point where they're willing to compromise, or where they set "nuke" precedents that can be used against them when they predictably get voted out of office.

"Compromise" here is basically "no, we're not going to cut trillions of future dollars of tax revenue right the fuck now so that we'll have an excuse to cut the budget by equally many trillions later this year, no, we're not going to abolish or implode entire government agencies in a matter of weeks, yes, we're going to fund things that the law says we have to fund." Things like that.

Obstruction that prevents the country from reaping the negative consequences of Republican policies is a mixed bag, because it insulates the country from those consequences at the same time that it protects us. On some level, I suspect that America as a whole needs to experience some degree of the same problems that have resulted in Kansas governor Sam Brownback having an 18% approval rating in a deeply red state.

Most Kansans are still willing to vote for Republicans after such experiences. Most Americans aren't.

So I honestly think it is necessary, in addition to being the right thing to do as the loyal-to-the-country opposition, to permit government to function while allowing the country to experience many of the negative consequences of the dominant party's policies.