We are in a battle of ideologies which has been the same for decades…..this group is at fault…..that group is unyielding….blah, blah….

But as my usual style I like to keep my readers as up-to-date as I can…..

Twice they tried….twice they failed…..

In what may become a daily occurrence while the government shutdown continues, rival stopgap spending bills were voted down in the Senate on Wednesday. A Democratic proposal to fund the government until Oct. 31 failed in a 53-47 vote, with Republicans united in opposition, the BBC reports. A House-passed Republican proposal to fund the government for seven weeks also failed to advance after a 55-45 vote. Both measures, which needed 60 votes to pass, failed by the same margins Tuesday night, leading to the shutdown at 12:01am. As in Tuesday night’s vote, Democrats Sens. John Fetterman and Catherine Cortez Masto voted for the GOP proposal, as did independent Sen. Angus King, while Republican Sen. Rand Paul voted against it.

There were no signs of a breakthrough that would end the deadlock on Wednesday, the New York Times reports. Both sides blamed each other for the shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats were “reflecting what the American people really want” with their push for healthcare funding, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune refused to link the issue to keeping the government open. “Everybody’s now asking the question, ‘How does this end?'” he said, per the Times. “It ends when Senate Democrats pick this bill up passed by the House of Representatives and vote for it.”

And true to form the Senate takes a break (but from where I sit they seem to always be on break) and slink off to pout and bitch.

The Senate adjourned for the day on Wednesday with no resolution on how to reopen the government. Blame was being cast on all sides on the first day of the shutdown. A vote to end the government shutdown failed earlier Wednesday, as Democrats in the Senate held firm to the party’s demands to fund health care subsidies that President Trump and other Republican leaders have refused to extend, the AP reports.

• At issue are tax credits that have made health insurance through the Affordable Care Act more affordable for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them—which would more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay for health insurance premiums, according to a KFF analysis.
• Republicans including Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of holding government services “hostage” and said they would be willing to talk about extending the credits, but only after the shutdown ended. “Let’s reopen the government before we have our negotiation about health care policy,” Vance said Wednesday, per the Washington Post.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune says that his message for senators trying to cobble together a bipartisan solution for funding the government is “when you have critical mass, come and talk to me.” That means any bipartisan fix will need support from at least eight Democrats. Thune gave no sign a negotiation was happening among leaders and appeared resigned to allowing the funding bill to sit in the Senate for at least several days, the AP reports.
• Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska confirmed Wednesday that he is part of a group of GOP senators working on a plan to extend the subsidies, Politico reports. He said that talks have been ongoing for weeks and that the group’s proposals are not being raised in negotiations to end the shutdown.
• The New York Times reports that the administration moved to “maximize the pain” of the shutdown for Democrats on Wednesday, with officials preparing for mass layoffs and moving to halt or cancel $26 billion in funding for projects in Democratic-led states.
• On video screens in the White House briefing room, the Trump administration played videos depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero. One of the deepfake videos, which had been shared by Trump on social media and were widely condemned as racist, began playing on monitors in the briefing room Wednesday afternoon. One deepfake video has Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer implying that Democrats seek to give free health care to immigrants in the country illegally while Jeffries, standing beside him, is depicted as wearing a Mexican sombrero and fake mustache. A second video, showing a clip of Jeffries condemning the first as “disgusting,” again depicts him that way, with an all-Trump mariachi band playing behind him.
• Vance played down the videos at the briefing Wednesday, the Washington Post reports. “The president is joking, and we’re having a good time,” he said, adding that if Jeffries helps “reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.” In a post on X, Jeffries said, “JD Vance thinks we will surrender to the Republican effort to gut healthcare because of a Sombrero meme. Not happening Bro.” He shared a meme of his own superimposing an image of Vance with a fat head and curly, long hair on a video of him in the briefing room earlier.

This is where the saga ends for the day…..accusations, pouting, and bitching…..all things Congress does exceptionally well.

Stay tuned there is more to come….more antics, more accusations and more fun for us analysts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”