Member Newsletter
(Ed. Note: I go into a lot of detail below. The bottom line is Democrats have about 48 hours to convince D senators to clip Elon’s wings. It’s still totally doable. But it has to happen in the next 48 hours.)
We’re now down to the wire with the so-called “continuing resolution” fight. And just to take this out of Congress-speak, this is a temporary spending bill that will keep the government running, such as it is, until Republicans can pass their full budget in the early fall — that’s the one that will slash health care coverage and other safety net spending to give the Elon crowd a massive tax cut. After almost two months of a criminal wilding spree on the republic, interspersed with lots of “cry more!”s and “sucks to be you”s, Republicans now come to Democrats and say: hey, now we need your help to keep going. The bill is essentially a license for Elon to keep the party going right through the fall.
The bill is being billed as a “clean CR” — in other words, just a continuation of the Biden budget. That’s not true. It’s the Biden-era stuff plus new money for a bunch of Trump priorities. What it doesn’t do is lock in the Musk-illegal cuts. What that also means is that it appropriates a bunch of money for stuff Elon has already shut down. So where’s that money go exactly?
Conventional wisdom is now that Republicans will be able to get their bill through the House with only their own votes. For Republicans, that’s impressive because it means they might be able to do this while losing, like, one vote. Perhaps this is wrong. But I’m assuming it’s right, because no one in their caucus seems to be saying otherwise. But that doesn’t change the overall equation, because Republicans still need seven Democratic votes in the Senate.
I wrote over the weekend that it seemed like Senate Democrats simply didn’t have their hearts in this and are preparing to cave on the vote. I’m maybe slightly less pessimistic than I was then. But not much. The simple fact is that Senate Democrats have laid none of the rhetorical groundwork to have this fight. That both makes having the fight much harder and makes it appear less likely that they’ll even try. If you haven’t packed the car you’re probably aren’t going on vacation, right? If the argument is, “Hey, we’re shutting down the government,” what’s the point?
But here’s where I see this right now. Yesterday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) went on Meet the Press and in the context of an otherwise fairly wishy-washy appearance said this on the aforementioned funding bill: “Everyone knows Congress has the power of the purse, so I just — until I see some assurances that whatever we pass next week is going to ensure that the money is spent the way Congress intends, I’m going to, I’m going to withhold my vote until I see that.”
A TPM reader asked me this weekend, is this what you were looking for? I told her it’s a very soft version of it. But it’s also not nothing. I also spoke to a TPM reader from the sciences part of the government who is hoping for a shutdown as the only way to finally focus the public’s attention on what’s happening. My sense is that a lot of what’s happening is very much breaking through to the public. You see it in the town halls, frankly. But there’s breaking through and there’s breaking through. A lot of this is like a series of death squads going building by building through a city. It’s very different from a bombing campaign. It’s very hard to see what’s happening. It’s all inside the buildings and the buildings are all still there looking the same as always. People only notice when things stop happening: a delivery doesn’t get made, a call isn’t answered, repairs don’t get made. Then people don’t come home in the evening.
This week is the best shot at finally forcing Senate Democrats to fight against the DOGE crime spree, which is really an attack on the sovereignty of the American people. What this bill, the new continuing resolution bill, amounts to is an Elon license deal. Musk has already slashed or shut down Social Security, VA medical funding, cancer cure research and tons other stuff. He’s trying as hard as he can to fire air traffic controllers, according to Trump’s own transportation secretary. This bill gives him free and clear to do that for the next six months. What Slotkin is saying here is that she won’t vote “yes” until that stops — in other words, until cuts that go against Congress’ own funding laws stop. Like I said, it’s a messy, fuzzy way to say it. But that’s what she’s saying. The issue is holding her to it.
So if you’re Slotkin’s constituent, I strongly recommend calling her office today, thanking her for her commitment and saying you plan to hold her to it. And I would be calling every other Democratic senator too. From what I can tell, most other Democratic senators are saying something similar but also in messy/squishy ways. Same deal. What will lock them down is hearing from their constituents.
As far as I can tell, only John Fetterman (D-PA) has said he will vote for the GOP’s bill. He says doing otherwise is voting for “chaos.” But that leaves them needing six more votes. That’s a lot.
If enough Democrats contact their senators in the next couple days, they will fall into line. That’s in your hands. The future is really in your hands.
One final point. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m a generalist who always has to seek out experts, often TPM readers, to bring me up to speed on different issues. This is one issue I get. In a legislative situation like this, opacity is the biggest ally of wavering elected officials, the biggest adversary of constituents trying to make their voice heard. Full stop. Absorb that.
If the headline is just “Senate Democrats don’t seem like they have their heart in it,” or “it seems like they’re going to cave,” basically all hope is lost. But if you had a map showing exactly where all 47 members of the Democratic caucus stand, it’s totally different.
Let’s say there’s Fetterman and two others who are definitely going to vote for this bill and 40 who are never going to vote for it. That means you know exactly which four to focus on. (If it’s two, all the better.) Voters can concentrate their fire on those four, make it clear to everyone else that those are the four who can let Elon fly or clip his wings. Once there’s some clarity about precisely where people stand, apart from general and vague comments, it’s extremely hard for legislators to resist their constituents’ demands.
So for anyone trying to have an impact on this, getting clarity on precisely where senators stand is just as critical as where they stand itself. Clarity is everything. If they’re voting for, great: get that information out as quick as you can. Until now, everything has been vague because there’s been no operative question, only hypotheticals. That just changed. Now there’s a specific piece of legislation, the Speaker Johnson-written continuing resolution. Are they voting for it or against? Or, specifically, are they voting to end debate? That’s the 60 votes thing. But same difference. It’s a binary choice for Democratic senators.
Constituents have about 48 hours to make a difference.
If you hear from your senator about where they stand, please let me know.