Summary
The House GOP’s new rules package aims to weaken minority party influence while advancing a pro-corporate agenda.
Key provisions include shielding the House speaker from bipartisan accountability and fast-tracking 12 GOP bills without allowing amendments, including measures to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) and protect fracking.
Democrats, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), criticized the package for ignoring economic and social issues like inflation and housing while prioritizing tax cuts for billionaires.
Republicans plan to offset these costs by slashing social programs, sparking warnings of further congressional dysfunction.
Yeah, actually, they did. Millions of Democrat voters stayed home. Every single state shifted right.
You’re in the minority party. Republicans have control of all 3 branches of government, and many state governments shifted right.
Simply put, what the fuck are you going to do about it? Democrats have exactly zero power outside of sitting back and watching.
Jokes on the Republicans-- Democrats like to watch [their party get effed]. So republicans are giving the democratic leadership exactly what it wants. We win again.
I mean, there’s always options, though if things start getting out of hand I suspect it’ll be narrowed down to some rather extreme options
And yet they’ll still somehow get blamed for everything that’s coming.
No shortage of people that just stupidly (or with an agenda) blame dems for the shitty republicans. People on lemmy saying Reagan was Carter’s fault, for example.
That’s how abusers think. “Look what you made me do.” Look how you made me stay home and not vote so now we have trump.
Bingo. So many donvict supporters pulled this shit when donvict “won” in 2016 - “Obama and Hollywood made me do this. You deserve tRump.” And yes, that is totally abuser type of talk.
It is expected that the demons on the right - like Tucker Carlson [1] - will use this kind of talk, but what is so damned infuriating is when the Enlightened Centrists ™ and the “liberal media” say it as well.
[1] Tucker was saying that at some point, he may have to turn to fascism because of what the left Made Him Do, because “too woke” or something.
More recent example: People on Lemmy continuing to blame the return of Trump on Biden and Harris. Harris wasn’t the perfect candidate, so of course the only reasonable thing to do was stay home and let Trump return to power. I mean, Liz Cheney showed up on stage to support her that one time. What else were voters supposed to do? This was all Harris’s fault, dammit!
As an outsider, Harris is worse than “not a perfect candidate”, she’s a really bad one.
Anything to avoid taking responsibility for their words and actions.
It’s not their fault in the sense that Harris was a bad candidate or Biden was a bad president compared to his peers. They were both fine but they largely stuck to early 2000s platforms (or at least could not overcome that perception) and people clearly want something different. Many can tell that the trajectory of the past isn’t going to work out for them. Trump isn’t a good response to that but Democrats are perceived to be categorically opposed to acknowledging the sentiment and adjusting course. It’s not exactly rational but it is understandable that people in a bad spot aren’t particularly concerned about things getting worse because from their perspective things are already pretty bad.
Here’s the part where I have to strongly disagree with the rationale.
I get it. You’ve (proverbially speaking) been in a hole for 4 years, and all you’re being offered is a rickety old ladder that looks like it’ll fall apart as soon as you go up a couple of steps. I can understand why the guy saying he might drop a nice shiny new ladder might look more appealing. But that’s not what’s going on here.
The guy saying he might offer you a shiny new ladder is also the same guy who was responsible for throwing you into this hole 4 years ago in the first place. And in fact, he’s not even holding a ladder this time. He’s promising to throw you a shovel and telling you to dig deeper.
That’s why I disagree. It would be one thing if Trump were throwing around the usual empty GOP promises. But Trump, Vance, and Musk have all come out and repeatedly said they were going to impose hardships on the poor, they were going to impose tariffs on virtually everything, and acknowledged that prices would likely continue to go up, not down.
I understand wanting someone offering a better ladder if you’re in a hole. But my god, the last thing you do is vote for the guy with the shovel.
A rickety ladder would have been fine. What we were offered was a choice between a shovel and dynamite.
You absolutely do not get it.
The republicans have held the minority many times and obstructed the fuck out of our government. If Dems really care they can do a lot to prevent shit in congress.
We will see how much they actually care in the next 2 years
The house can’t do much, but the senate can use the same tactics Republicans did and block up everything.
Until the GOP gets rid of the filibuster. Which will happen the nanosecond Democrats use it to block Trump’s agenda. And then Senate Democrats can just pull up a spot on the bench next to the House Democrats so they can sit back and watch with them.
Yep. Democrats didn’t because it goes against norms, but Republicans don’t have any care about norms if it gets in their way.