US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9753

On January 22 2018 08:50 Introvert wrote:


yes they do, we've been discussing three of them.

Graham: Stephen Miller makes immigration deal impossible

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) warned on Sunday that the White House staff is undercutting President Trump and Congress's ability to get a deal on immigration.

"Every time we have a proposal it is only yanked back by staff members. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere," Graham told reporters as he headed into a closed-door negotiation with a bipartisan group of senators.

He added that "the White House staff, I think, is making it very difficult."

Miller, a White House aide, is well known for his conservative views on immigration. He was formerly a staffer for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who frequently opposed bipartisan immigration deals.

Miller authored the White House's wide-ranging immigration plan, which includes wall funding and cracking down on cities that don't comply with federal immigration law.

Graham said on Sunday that Miller has "been an outlier for years" on the issue of immigration.

The White House fired back at Graham.

"As long as Senator Graham chooses to support legislation that sides with people in this country illegally and unlawfully instead of our own American citizens, we are going nowhere. He’s been an outlier for years," said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

Democrats have repeatedly bristled at Miller's involvement in the immigration talks, arguing he isn't a constructive force in the immigration talks.

On January 22 2018 10:06 ChristianS wrote:
Incidentally, there's a lot of stupidity on Twitter but one of the stupidest things I have ever seen has to be the partisan randos alternately copy-pasting either #SchumerShutdown or #TrumpShutdown in replies to politicians' tweets

On January 22 2018 07:57 KwarK wrote:

The two aren't very obviously related.

The first is what to do to fix the problem of non citizens who were raised here. And both sides agree on a solution to that.

The second is how to prevent illegal immigrants from bringing their undocumented children into the country, and both sides cannot agree on a solution to that.

The argument that we cannot enact the solution both sides agree on to problem 1 until one side caves on problem 2 is obtuse.

Imagine there was a river that burst its banks and flooded nearby houses. One person who lives in the house thinks that this wouldn't happen if the river were dredged to clear accumulated silt. Another person thinks that building up the river banks higher is the way to go. They both agree that the water currently in the house should be pumped out. If they went with your argument they'd be wading around the living room while they debated the merits of dredging.

On January 22 2018 11:10 Belisarius wrote:


The thing that needs to be added to that analogy is that the two people have different relationships to the river. One is like a fish farmer or something; having water around is probably beneficial to him, he just doesn't want it in his house. The other guy grows cacti and would rather live in Arizona; he wants the thing dammed and diverted.

Cactus guy sees that fish guy is more motivated to discuss the river while his house is flooded. He's concerned that if he agrees to have their houses pumped, fish guy will at that point decide there is no further problem, and nothing will be done about the long-term issue.

I mostly agree with the democrat position here, but it's not an accurate analogy to present them as offering two competing solutions of equal magnitude. The two sides disagree on the extent of the long-term reform necessary, and that makes the short-term problem related. It would be related even if the dems didn't actually benefit from immigration at all - the R's believe they do, and want to ensure they stay at the table.

On January 22 2018 12:00 ChristianS wrote:
I talked to my sister who works at the State Department, and she said she doesn't know if she's furloughed or not. She's supposed to go in tomorrow, find out if she's furloughed, and set up her out of office stuff and go home if she is. She said last time they took everybody's Blackberries too, and didn't get paychecks, but they got backpaid when the shutdown was over. The talk is that with this administration they might not get backpaid but she doesn't know if that's tinfoil hat nonsense or not.

Thought you guys might find it interesting.

On January 22 2018 11:54 mozoku wrote:
My issue with KwarK's argument as it pertains to the shutdown is that the argument itself is almost undeniably is a stronger argument against tying DACA and funding together than it is against DACA and border security together. The latter pair are at the very least arguably related, the former two are quite obviously not.

I agree with him to the extent that I don't see issues, in a vacuum, with passing DACA now and handling border security later. This is basically the same argument I've made against Democrats for the past several pages: pass funding now, worry about DACA later.

Belisarius and Introvert make fair points about politics and each side's motivations though. Funnily enough, these are the same arguments Democrats are using against Republicans about delaying DACA legislation (lack sufficient motivation to credibly believe they'll actually tackle the issue before March). Politics is a mess, unsurprisingly. I think we'd be better off without the messy and pernicious theatrics, and would prefer a world where both the government is funded and DACA is passed.

On January 22 2018 12:00 ChristianS wrote:
I talked to my sister who works at the State Department, and she said she doesn't know if she's furloughed or not. She's supposed to go in tomorrow, find out if she's furloughed, and set up her out of office stuff and go home if she is. She said last time they took everybody's Blackberries too, and didn't get paychecks, but they got backpaid when the shutdown was over. The talk is that with this administration they might not get backpaid but she doesn't know if that's tinfoil hat nonsense or not.

Thought you guys might find it interesting.

On January 22 2018 14:51 IgnE wrote:


The precedent is backpay. I'm pretty sure even the Republicans know that people will be pissed if they aren't paid.

I don't really expect the government to be shut down for more than a couple days anyway.

On January 22 2018 15:17 ritoky wrote:
I don't really know what the Republicans expected here. When they went full obstructionist under Obama, did they not expect the Democrats to do the same back to them? Of course they're threatening shut downs and essentially negotiating with a gun to your head; it's the same shit you were doing. And then they all act incredulous like they are surprised or like it is this brand new horrific tactic. Please.

The small shred of optimism in me hopes that this can be the end to obstructionist politics and that we stop scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of bill passages per year in Congress. Or that something like this can fracture the parties and allow for some form of moderation to exist in America again.

The realist in me knows none of that will happen. Expecting another CR by the end of the week. Woo Hoo.

On January 22 2018 15:26 Danglars wrote:

Did you miss the part where 5-10 posters argued that this was not the case? That this was very different than "the Democrats to do the same back to them?" It sounds like you missed it.

On January 22 2018 16:42 Kyadytim wrote:

Nah. Using game theory terminology, Republicans having been choosing "defect" for around twenty years at more or less every opportunity while Democrats have been been mostly choosing "cooperate." If Democrats have finally decided to start responding to defecting by defecting as well (aka tit for tat), that's entirely rational. Republicans kept CHIP unfunded so they'd have a defect opportunity available to them. It's about time Democrats stopped giving in to that sort of hostage taking, because giving in just rewards it and encourages more of it. Of course that results in both sides doing shitty things, because there is no way to punish defection except by also choosing to defect.

Since Republicans took the House in the middle of Clinton's first term and Newt Gingrich became Speaker for the House, Republicans have restricted the scope of possible policy changes to what they want or nothing, even if shutting down the government is a requirement or consequence of making sure nothing happens rather than policy changes Democrats want. Democrats spent those twenty years continuing to act as if Republicans could be coaxed back into cooperating. You don't get to be pissed that Democrats are no longer just letting Republicans walk all over them while achieving nothing.

To be clear, this argument is not "Democrats shut down the government, but it's okay because Republicans shut down the government a few years ago." Republicans grabbed CHIP four months ago, and are now holding a gun to its head and saying "We'll let CHIP go if you give us everything else we want," and instead of folding like a house of cards because they're choosing to cooperate in the face of Republicans defecting, Democrats chose to also defect. This shutdown only happened because both parties chose to defect. If it seems that its the Democrats fault, that's only because we're so used to Republicans choosing to defect that we take it for granted.


Regarding using game theory terminology, the US political situation is fairly analogous to a prisoners' dilemma game. Both parties cooperating gets both of them more than both parties defecting, but if one party defects and the other cooperates, the defector benefits a lot at the cooperator's expense. For any specific set of policy issues, it's not really accurate, but for modeling the general behavior of the two parties over the last 25 years or so, it works out just fine.

tl;dr is that Republicans have been choosing to be dicks for twenty years, and Democrats have finally concluded that as they can't gain anything as long as Republicans are choosing to be dicks and they lose less by also choosing to be dicks, so now both major parties are acting like dicks. In the immediate sense, Democrats are at fault for changing their position from "not dicks" to "dicks," but that assumes that Democrats have an obligation to continue bending over for Republicans for as long as Republicans choose to be dicks. In the broadest sense, Republicans are at fault for making politics about being dicks instead of not being dicks. In the general sense, if at least one party had chosen to not be dicks, there wouldn't have been a shutdown, so both parties are at fault because they both chose to be dicks.



As an analysis, I wouldn't expect Democrats to blink any time soon, because they just committed to this strategy after years of trying to avoid it, so it's got a bit of inertia behind it. If Republicans also don't blink, government grinds to a halt, which was the inevitable result of Newt Gingrich's and Dennis Hastert's "Republican policy or no policy" approach to House politics. Republicans might avert this by doing away with the filibuster, which will improve the situation in the short term as government starts moving extremely smoothly, but it will make things much worse once we pass eight to ten years out as policy only changes when one party controls Congress and the White House and neither party has any reason to not go all-in on writing everything in their platform into law.

On January 22 2018 17:40 Danglars wrote:

Well, regardless of my disagreements with how you arrived at your conclusion, I'm happy to find another that agrees that it is tit for tat. I read about five pages of rationalization to why it was substantially different than what Obama did to House Republicans/Boehner did to Obama. I know it's a very small point of agreement, but it's the start of honest characterization to arrive at greater points.

Finally, let's be clear that 4 weeks of funding to continue the debate on compromises is not "give us everything else we want." 4 weeks of funding is not equivalent to 6 years of CHIP. It just guarantees another fight on a short timetable, without CHIP funding at risk. I know it probably goes without saying, but if you think DACA negotiation is important enough to temporarily shut down 13% of the government, then go for it.