Among Shutdown Woes, GOPers Worry That Departing Members Won’t Show Up To Vote

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 19: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) walks with President Donald Trump before a meeting with House Republicans at the United States Capitol Hill on Tuesday June 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. ... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 19: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) walks with President Donald Trump before a meeting with House Republicans at the United States Capitol Hill on Tuesday June 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Republican headaches around the possible impending shutdown are legion: President Donald Trump’s obstinance on his $5 billion wall, his televised pronouncement that Republicans would own the shutdown and the utter lack of will for Democrats to concede an inch of their better positioning.

Now, a new problem is cropping up. Republican lawmakers who were defeated in their elections or who are retiring are playing hooky — and it’s not at all clear that they’ll come back for votes if a deal is struck over the wall and shutdown, according to a Sunday New York Times report.

Relegated to cubicles, the lame-duck members see little incentive to show up to work. Their days are numbered and, per the Times, resentment and tension with coworkers and the job have festered by this stage of the game.

At least two dozen Republican lawmakers have skipped votes in recent weeks, according to the Times.

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Notable Replies

  1. Glue traps usually hold rodents quite well.

  2. Avatar for erik_t erik_t says:

    Relegated to cubicles, the lame-duck members see little incentive to show up to work.

    The American working middle class laughs and laughs and laughs. Welcome to our club, spoiled assholes!

  3. This is a very funny problem and i guess we know why Pelosi was so confident. “You think these guys will come back to vote for your damn wall”

  4. Relegated to cubicles, the lame-duck members see little incentive to show up to work.

    From rugged individualist boot-strapping independent Protestant out to change the world to unprofessional petulant teenager* in one election. Who knew?

    Now, if they actually stood for something and had a goal in mind, it might be different.

    *I know lots of hard-working intelligent contentious teenagers… you know, the ones who want to register as Democrats.

  5. Frankly, lame-duck sessions should be either out-right banned or severely constrained in scope. They’re a relic of the horse-and-buggy era, when it took months to count things and move people.

    When you evict someone from a home, you show up with the cops and escort them off the premises, you don’t give them months to damage the drywall and appliances.

    There’s no reason, in 2018, that we can’t have a system where the losers of the elections don’t have time to damage similarly damage our Country.

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