This got hung up somewhere, but it is still just as valid today when Congress still has not accomplished anything of note while the parties squabble with each other as it was when I wrote it before the shutdown....
Shutdown: Congress shouldn’t get paid during standoff, Va. rep says | WTOP
But McConnell called it a “political stunt” and said it would be useless to allow a vote that wouldn’t get Trump’s signature. The GOP lawmaker said simply, “This would not produce a result.”
In 2012, I wrote a post on the House of Representative’s 33 vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. At the time I questioned why the Party of No was wasting the tax payer’s time with a show vote that would not result in anything more than, well a show vote.
Fast forward six years, and we have a Senate that seems to think show votes are a waste of time, and therefore, they will not do it. Except that this time, the vote is not a show vote. It is an adult, bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate, to be voted on to end the government shutdown. And this time, it is likely that even if the President does not sign the bill, there will be enough votes to override any veto he might threaten. That is what is scaring the Majority Leader. He is worried to his marrow that he has lost control of the Senate on this particular issue. Especially when the same Senate, not forty-eight hours before the shutdown began voted in favor of the same bill as the House has presented them.
I am beginning to think that this may actually be the definition of insanity.