At 2am Thursday morning, Senate Republicans approved a budgetary claw-back because Trump and his vicious budget director Russ Vought want one.
The best description I've read of what happened was in this morning's fundraising email from Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. It's worth your time:
Something unprecedented is happening on the Senate floor tonight. Republicans are pulling off a con job, and I think you need to know about it. So let me walk you through it.
Republicans are codifying Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts into law via a rarely used rescission process. Not only does Congress rarely pass rescission bills, it has never passed a partisan rescissions bill before. Every year, Congress has to pass a budget that can get 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster — forcing the modern appropriations process to be bipartisan.
That happened in the spring. I voted against it because Republicans didn’t really negotiate with Democrats. They made a bunch of cuts to important programs, and it gave Trump more power. But enough of my Democratic colleagues felt pressured into voting for it out of fear that a government shutdown would give Trump even more power to make far more drastic cuts.
Fast forward to today. Republicans are on the cusp of enacting the first ever partisan rescissions bill. They’re doing by using s a type of legislation that has privileged consideration in the Senate and allows any cuts to the budget with just 50 votes.
So Republicans are using it to cut out funding congressional Democrats and Republicans approved but Musk and DOGE targeted. At Trump’s direction, they are going after life-saving food and medical care through foreign aid and funding for PBS and NPR.
Why should Democrats ever again negotiate a bipartisan bill with Republicans if they plan to pass a partisan bill just two months later to achieve their preferred budget?
This isn’t just bad policy. It’s another way Republicans are corroding the rule of law and institutional norms that have held our democracy together for decades.
It’s a dirty trick from Republicans. No party has EVER double-crossed the minority party like Republicans are doing right now. With it, they have once again shown that Trump, corporations and billionaires, and their own desire for power will always come first — morals and ethics be damned.
There will be real impacts on our security and on families because of these cuts. And in the bigger picture, it is another assault on democratic norms.
We have to keep sounding the alarm and mobilizing people nationwide against what is happening. If we let this kind of erosion of our democracy pass without a word, we make it easier for Trump’s authoritarianism and corruption to succeed.
Every best wish,
Chris Murphy
