Congress To Vote On Things Monday On Capitol Hill, YMMV

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

Related Post Roulette

4 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    We have been told to begin prepping for a shut down of indeterminate length. I note that – despite all the puffery and propaganda about government needing to be more business like – no business would run itself this way.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to Philip H says:

      Quite true, good chance it would go bankrupt or be bought by the better run government in its marketspace.

      Alas, we take the good with the bad when it comes to government and finances.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

      The thing is, the kinds of things you want government to do are incompatible with the basic principles of business. Business is a cooperative process, in that customers and firms are engaging in mutually beneficial transactions. Customers get goods and services, employees and shareholders, get money, and everyone wins. Yes, externalities muddy the picture in some cases, and the government should (and usually does) step in to correct the worst of those, but fundamentally, business is cooperative.

      This is also more or less true of a night-watchman government, which is primarily engaged in the business of mitigating externalities. It does its thing, and everyone wins. Almost everyone is fine with paying for that, since it isn’t very expensive and is clearly beneficial.

      But what we actually have is a government whose primary purpose is robbing Peter to Paul. This is fundamentally a competitive operation. Paul loves it when he gets paid, but Peter isn’t so keen on getting robbed. This creates conflict, and now we’re no longer all on the same team. If you want a government than can pick winners and losers, you’re going to get conflict.

      All that aside, raising the debt ceiling can be done through reconciliation. Democrats can do this all on their own. Forcing them to use one of a limited supply of reconciliation tokens, and to do it unanimously, thereby possibly extracting some concessions from the more fiscally responsible members of the party, is clearly the right move.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    The whole “Iron Dome” vote kinda went sideways.

    There’s only one way to go from here:

    Report