Someone in the congressional office of Rep. Angie Craig is having fun with acronyms.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Democrat unveiled a bill taking aim at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the federal government nears a shutdown at the end of the month. Party in-fighting has left the Republican leader struggling to pass a spending plan to fund government services.
Craig’s bill would block members of Congress from receiving their scheduled pay if the government shuts down and federal workers are furloughed. She is calling the legislation the My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act, or the MCCARTHY Shutdown Act for short.
The Democrat said her tribute to the House speaker, if passed, would make sure lawmakers experience the same lost paychecks as regular Americans.
“Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are ready to shut down the federal government and put the livelihoods of working families at risk — while still collecting a paycheck,” Craig said in a statement. “[I]t’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck.”
According to the bill text, lawmakers’ pay during the shutdown period would be held in escrow until the final day of the session, when it would be released for payment so as not to violate the law prescribing congressional salaries.
Federal workers who are furloughed generally do not receive pay while the government is shut down. In the past, Congress has stepped in and passed legislation retroactively to make workers whole for the wages they lost, but the missing pay can lead to financial anxieties and hardships while the shutdown persists.
The last shutdown — dubbed a partial shutdown, since certain agencies remained open — was the longest in U.S. history, lasting 35 days from late 2018 into early 2019. The impasse stemmed from then-President Donald Trump’s demand for federal money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
During that saga, more than 100 lawmakers pledged to refuse their paychecks since the shutdown was the fault of Congress and the White House. Such proposals stretch back to at least to 2013, when some members moved to cut off Congressional salaries during a spending impasse.
This time, right-wing lawmakers are trying to pressure McCarthy into demanding spending cuts that would run counter to an agreement he made with President Joe Biden. They have threatened to oust McCarthy as speak if he doesn’t follow through.
“[I]t’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck.”
- Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.)
Hardliners even managed to torpedo a bill to fund the Pentagon, which is typically among the easiest to get GOP members behind.
McCarthy can lose no more than four Republican votes to get legislation passed, and it would need to be something that can clear the Senate, where Democrats hold a threadbare majority.
“I want to make sure we don’t shut down,” McCarthy told Fox News over the weekend. “I don’t think that is a win for the American public and I definitely believe it’ll make our hand weaker if we shut down.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that both chambers were being pushed around by “a small band of hard-right Republicans.”
It would be a good start if it had any hope at all at passing.
Yup, it’s just for show.
It’s not “just” for show. It’s “specifically” for show. That’s the point and it’s not a bad thing. The Republican electorate is overwhelmingly filled with morons who don’t scratch past the first couple of words. Democrats are often called out for not branding things right, or not painting issues in compelling/visceral ways. This address both if those things on an issue that most people care about (getting a paycheck).
The republicans know it has no chance of passing. Not just because they know they won’t vote for it, but because the democrats won’t either.
The only audience for this show is you. The majority of the republican electorate isn’t even aware of this in the first place. The few who have any political consciousness aren’t going to have some left wing awakening over it, they’re gonna just use it as another excuse to hate democrats because that’s how their “news” tells them to interpret it.
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Even if it were real, I assume they make most of their money from bribes anyway and don’t give a fuck so much about their base salary.
In principle, I like the idea and yes, it’s humorous. But truthfully, missing a paycheck (or several) hits different when you have savings and a decent salary. Congress isn’t living paycheck-to-paycheck or just above it.
Which is, ironically, why it would make political sense to pass this. Not a single congressman is really living paycheck to paycheck. And once the shutdown is over, they’d get the money anyway.
No loss of comfort, due to the ability to postpone payments / dip into savings. No lost income due to eventually getting paid. Huge political bragging rights due to “solidarity”
Literally no downside.
Yet, not a single one of these greedy fucks will probably support it.
Also a lot of their money comes from things like insider trading anyways and many were already a multimillionaire/billionaire to begin with.
Most aren’t but then laws like this also punish junior lawmakers who aren’t independently wealthy.
The kind of lawmakers who you want representing their districts.
Not to mention it makes fertile soil for lobbying interests to come in and “help” the lawmakers which can make things worse.
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Junior lawmakers are members of congress.
A very small number probably are but they are also almost certainly not the ones this is targeting.
My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act, or the MCCARTHY Shutdown Act for short
Chapeau 🍾
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that both chambers were being pushed around by “a small band of hard-right Republicans.”
Democracy is supposed to be majority rule. This seems broken. How can it be fixed?
As written in the constitution it was a democracy where only landowners has the franchise. After the oligarchy stopped being landed gentry and became merchants and exploitation manufacturing owners they changed it so they could buy the reps they want.
We have one party that cares about decorum but not results and another party that cares about results but not decorum. The latter is the one with the obvious advantage.
This is obsurd. Neither party gives a shit about decorum. Individuals within each party sure, but the parties couldn’t care less
Actually there were plenty of times… such as when Barack Obama legally had the authority to just push a Supreme Court Justice on through when the right refused to hold any vote.
And instead even though he had the power to do so, but not the precedent he played the game of “Let the election decide” that Mitch McConnell told him to play.
After realizing the whole thing was trick and the right was perfectly willing to do anything that they had the powers do but not the precedent, Obama doubled down and said “When they go low, we go high.”
The problem of course that the Republicans were more than happy to tell the democrats, they can go as high as they want, Republicans still keep going low if it gets results… and it does because the only opposition they have are people who think that they can shame the Devil Himself into behaving as long as they earn enough good boy points
That’s technically true, but the US was never a full democracy. It was always a Republic, with provisions for preventing what the framers called “the tyranny of the majority.” It’s just that Republicans have abandoned any pretense of civility and have chosen to game the rules ruthlessly in their bid for authoritarian power.
So for years we’ve suffered under the tyranny of the minority, which is far worse.
If I did something that caused my place of business to shut down for an indeterminate amount of time, Not only would I be fired, but there would be several legal penalties my way, some civil, some Criminal. But lawmakers are above the law it seems
Even if this could get passed (it won’t) this wouldn’t be enough. Public servants should be just that - servants. It should be the least desirable and least lucrative job in the whole fucking country. To dispel any notion of impropriety, congressional salary should be equivalent to the federal minimum wage and cannot be increased any other way than by increasing federal minimum wage, all congressmen and senators should be forbidden from holding securities of any kind including cryptocurrency and other speculative assets, forbidden from owning property beyond their primary place of residence, completely and utterly banned from accepting money or gifts of any kind from non-family members, and all of their financial assets prior to taking their oath of office must be placed in a trust that they do not have access to.
We badly need this safeguard to save us from rampant and blatant corruption. Your elected officials hold financial stakes in the industries they are responsible for regulating. If people can’t see that as a conflict of interest, then nothing is.
I agree with a lot of what you said, especially banning them from trading, but having dirt poor leaders just makes them easy to bribe imo, plus the brain drain to more lucrative careers.
It also would solidify the stranglehold of wealthy elites in our elected offices. Average Americans cant afford to run for office if they will sacrifice their paycheck.
You get the help you pay for. If a Smart Person has a choice between taking a job in the private sector and a job in the public sector, and the public sector isn’t competitive, then the people working for America are going to be the dregs that couldn’t get a private sector job.
Americans should want public servants to be smart and effective, and to get those people, you have to pay them.
We get the dregs anyway.
This should be a law regardless of whether or not the shutdown actually happens.
Remember the 2018/19 breadlines and food banks that were overflowing with furloughed civil servants who couldn’t afford groceries? Those are the people who will suffer again. It’s some shameful bullshit.
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While I appreciate the clever title, it would be nice if that wasn’t also the extent of cleverness coming out of Congress lately.
You would think Republican voters would get tired of this bullshit, yet they keep electing the same deplorable representatives. Voters are not sending us their best.
Whoever is responsible should receive a fine for damages that occur as a result.
Or force a special election for anyone voting against a funding bill. Holding the nation hostage for your pet project is insanity.
Something like this is just not a good idea. Then we have a situation where the corrupt and rich house members can strongarm everyone else with a government shutdown, because they’re the ones that won’t care about missing paychecks. Who wants that?
There’s no way it would pass. It’s being introduced as a reminder that the people actively trying to shut down the government don’t care about the lives they destroy when they play these games. It’s political theater, but it’s intended to make a point. I think it’s a good point to make: people can literally live or die based on public policy.
That’s true, but perhaps we could cut it to minimum wage for DC, $17/hour, and then the rest can be paid out at the end of session
