4 ms·

Legislation that everyone agrees with gets shot down because one side doesn't want to make the other side look good. Republicans torpedoed a recent border bill

Legislation that everyone agrees with gets shot down because one side doesn't want to make the other side look good. Republicans torpedoed a recent border bill because they didn't want to give Biden brownie points.

roenxi 2y ago
Do you have a reference to which bill you are talking about? I've lost all confidence in people ascribing motivations to politicians without a reference to what they've actually said.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  I can give you the bill itself[0] and a few related pieces[1][2][3] [0] https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majority/murray-releases-text-of-bipartisan-national-security-supplemental https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majority/murray-r... [1]https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/myths-and-facts-surrounding-bipartisan-border-deal-killed-republicans-and-right-wing https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/myths-and-facts-sur... [2]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-republicans-block-bipartisan-border-package-scrapping-deal-they-had-demanded-from-democrats https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-republicans-blo... [3]https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-border-deal-stupid-republicans-biden-win-1234949036/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-bo...
  - roenxi 2y ago
    In your first link, the bill itself was introduced with: "As Ukraine runs low on ammunition to fend off Putin’s brutal invasion, it is imperative we finally extend our support. We must also live up to our commitments to our allies around the globe and quickly get more aid to innocent civilians caught in conflict, including in Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis is especially dire. I never believed we should link policy demands to emergency aid for our allies, but Republicans insisted—so Democrats negotiated in good faith over many weeks and now there is a bipartisan deal on border policy legislation. Ukraine’s fate and so much more hangs in the balance—it’s time for Congress to act." I don't trust that this can be represented as a border bill. The person introducing the bill seems to think it is a Ukraine (and Gaza) bill with compromises included. 80% of the money mentioned in the dot point list is going to non-border things. This tells us more about the Republican stance on foreign interventions than their feelings on borders. Also, the effort being put into calling this a "bipartisan" bill (in everything I'm reading, it seems) is highly suspect. They can't call a bill bipartisan if one side is voting against it - it clearly isn't bipartisan.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      The bill was co-sponsored and put together by Republican and Democrat senators which is why they call it bipartisan. I agree that I would prefer the bill didn't have any riders and was just a border bill but none of the Republican complaints have to do with the aid to Ukraine so I don't think it is relevant here.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > ... but none of the Republican complaints have to do with the aid to Ukraine ... I'm repeating myself here I suppose, but do you have any references for what the Republicans are saying in their own words? Because the links were doing line-out-of-context quotes and I don't have confidence those are representative. I don't think there is strong evidence here that the Republicans were shooting things down border legislation to avoid giving Biden brownie points. The situation appears to be the the Democrats were trying to send ~$80 billion split among Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan and their negotiations to get that through Congress failed. In that process it doesn't look like the Dems were even trying to deal with the border except as a compromise. Occam's razor suggests that the bill wasn't going to get the outcome on the ground that the Republicans wanted. Otherwise the story is they negotiated to add something unrelated in only to vote it away, which seems a bit counterproductive even as political theatre (ie, why? it only gives the Dems something to talk about). They don't gain anything by voting down something that they nominally wanted and asked to be included in a totally unrelated bill. If anything the process would suggest they were being disingenuous on being willing to fund Ukraine rather than anything border related.
        BadHumans 2y ago
        You say the quotes are out of context so what exactly do you want to see? > Otherwise the story is they negotiated to add something unrelated in only to vote it away, which seems a bit counterproductive even as political theatre (ie, why? it only gives the Dems something to talk about) This is what happened though.
        2y ago
underlipton 2y ago
You've got a better example in your back pocket if you ever need to use it: Obamacare was previously Romneycare which was originally a Heritage Foundation spec bill. Republicans went on a decade-long campaign to dismantle a system that they wrote because a Democratic president implemented it.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  They didn't actually dismantle it though, and it seems unlikely that the bill that actually passed was an unmodified publication of the Heritage Foundation. This seems more like the Motte and Bailey disease in an election cycle. Both parties pass a bill that they both like 75% of, but then they need something to campaign on. So one party says "we're going to repeal the dastardly bill" and cites the parts of it they don't like. The other party says "they say they're going to repeal the vital bill, we have to stop them" and cites the parts of it that everybody likes. Then if the complaining party gets in they keep the parts everybody likes and maybe change some of the other parts. Never confuse what politicians say they're going to do with what they're actually going to do.
  - underlipton 2y ago
    >They didn't actually dismantle it though They weakened it considerably, and also spent a lot of time and money that could have been spent on other problems trying to repeal it altogether. >it seems unlikely that the bill that actually passed was an unmodified publication of the Heritage Foundation. I feel like it would be rather trivial to determine if the initially-proposed ACA and the HF version were substantially different. You don't have to "seems unlikely" it; go and check.

roenxi 2y ago

Do you have a reference to which bill you are talking about? I've lost all confidence in people ascribing motivations to politicians without a reference to what they've actually said.

BadHumans 2y ago
I can give you the bill itself[0] and a few related pieces[1][2][3] [0] https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majority/murray-releases-text-of-bipartisan-national-security-supplemental https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majority/murray-r... [1]https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/myths-and-facts-surrounding-bipartisan-border-deal-killed-republicans-and-right-wing https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/myths-and-facts-sur... [2]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-republicans-block-bipartisan-border-package-scrapping-deal-they-had-demanded-from-democrats https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-republicans-blo... [3]https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-border-deal-stupid-republicans-biden-win-1234949036/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-bo...
- roenxi 2y ago
  In your first link, the bill itself was introduced with: "As Ukraine runs low on ammunition to fend off Putin’s brutal invasion, it is imperative we finally extend our support. We must also live up to our commitments to our allies around the globe and quickly get more aid to innocent civilians caught in conflict, including in Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis is especially dire. I never believed we should link policy demands to emergency aid for our allies, but Republicans insisted—so Democrats negotiated in good faith over many weeks and now there is a bipartisan deal on border policy legislation. Ukraine’s fate and so much more hangs in the balance—it’s time for Congress to act." I don't trust that this can be represented as a border bill. The person introducing the bill seems to think it is a Ukraine (and Gaza) bill with compromises included. 80% of the money mentioned in the dot point list is going to non-border things. This tells us more about the Republican stance on foreign interventions than their feelings on borders. Also, the effort being put into calling this a "bipartisan" bill (in everything I'm reading, it seems) is highly suspect. They can't call a bill bipartisan if one side is voting against it - it clearly isn't bipartisan.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    The bill was co-sponsored and put together by Republican and Democrat senators which is why they call it bipartisan. I agree that I would prefer the bill didn't have any riders and was just a border bill but none of the Republican complaints have to do with the aid to Ukraine so I don't think it is relevant here.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > ... but none of the Republican complaints have to do with the aid to Ukraine ... I'm repeating myself here I suppose, but do you have any references for what the Republicans are saying in their own words? Because the links were doing line-out-of-context quotes and I don't have confidence those are representative. I don't think there is strong evidence here that the Republicans were shooting things down border legislation to avoid giving Biden brownie points. The situation appears to be the the Democrats were trying to send ~$80 billion split among Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan and their negotiations to get that through Congress failed. In that process it doesn't look like the Dems were even trying to deal with the border except as a compromise. Occam's razor suggests that the bill wasn't going to get the outcome on the ground that the Republicans wanted. Otherwise the story is they negotiated to add something unrelated in only to vote it away, which seems a bit counterproductive even as political theatre (ie, why? it only gives the Dems something to talk about). They don't gain anything by voting down something that they nominally wanted and asked to be included in a totally unrelated bill. If anything the process would suggest they were being disingenuous on being willing to fund Ukraine rather than anything border related.
      - BadHumans 2y ago
        You say the quotes are out of context so what exactly do you want to see? > Otherwise the story is they negotiated to add something unrelated in only to vote it away, which seems a bit counterproductive even as political theatre (ie, why? it only gives the Dems something to talk about) This is what happened though.
        2y ago

underlipton 2y ago

You've got a better example in your back pocket if you ever need to use it: Obamacare was previously Romneycare which was originally a Heritage Foundation spec bill. Republicans went on a decade-long campaign to dismantle a system that they wrote because a Democratic president implemented it.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
They didn't actually dismantle it though, and it seems unlikely that the bill that actually passed was an unmodified publication of the Heritage Foundation. This seems more like the Motte and Bailey disease in an election cycle. Both parties pass a bill that they both like 75% of, but then they need something to campaign on. So one party says "we're going to repeal the dastardly bill" and cites the parts of it they don't like. The other party says "they say they're going to repeal the vital bill, we have to stop them" and cites the parts of it that everybody likes. Then if the complaining party gets in they keep the parts everybody likes and maybe change some of the other parts. Never confuse what politicians say they're going to do with what they're actually going to do.
- underlipton 2y ago
  >They didn't actually dismantle it though They weakened it considerably, and also spent a lot of time and money that could have been spent on other problems trying to repeal it altogether. >it seems unlikely that the bill that actually passed was an unmodified publication of the Heritage Foundation. I feel like it would be rather trivial to determine if the initially-proposed ACA and the HF version were substantially different. You don't have to "seems unlikely" it; go and check.