Republicans Make An Offer Democrats Can Easily Refuse


So here’s the latest brainstorm from the tea party wizards in the House:

Sure, that’ll work. The idea here is to fund a small handful of the most public casualties of the government shutdown as a way of easing public anger over the consequences of Republican hostage taking. Of course Democrats will be eager to help out with this. And they’ll be especially eager to do this because Republicans have made it clear that they’ll refuse to fund anything that Democrats care about:

“We’re going to start picking off those priorities that are important,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), as lawmakers prepared to vote to reopen the national parks and services for veterans. “The IRS was last on the list. The EPA was right above it.”

Gosh. Why wouldn’t Democrats take Republicans up on a deal like this? They make it sound so attractive.

Just fund the government, guys. Democrats have already agreed to your spending levels. They’re not going to save you from yourselves by giving you anything more.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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