Yet Johnson had the time to slam in at the last minute with no committee hearings or being addressed by the entire House an add on to the end of year must pass military budget that would block the military from granting gender affirming care to dependents of service members. If that remains it will hurt moral and hit retention. Family with trans kids will leave the military to get the care their kids need. Plus again it is based on ideology and religion, not science. Ok the link above was gotten from Ten Bears’ site, the link will be below because of how fucked up WordPress has gotten. Hugs
Speaker Mike Johnson
Over the weekend, House Republicans once again failed to secure a deal to fund the federal government. The deadline for approving a spending bill is Dec. 20 and without its passage there could be another shutdown, which has happened before on the GOP’s watch.
Speaker Mike Johnson has been unable to get members of his own party representing farm districts to back the legislation currently being negotiated. Politico reports that Republicans planned to circulate the text of the bill among members on Sunday, but that soft deadline has passed without a solution and now leadership may reach out to Democrats for help.
Advocacy groups and lobbyists representing farming interests have been pushing Congress to include farm relief in the funding bill.
“Our country will suffer the consequences if Congress takes farmers & our food supply for granted. I call on members of Congress who represent ag to stand with farmers by insisting the supplemental spending bill include economic aid for farmers and voting it down if it doesn’t,” Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation wrote.
Ironically, one reason farms are seeking relief is that they are still dealing with the economic fallout from Donald Trump’s trade war, which led to decreased sales of U.S. farm products on the international market. Trump has proposed similar trade policies, including tariffs, for his second term despite the economic risk to millions of consumers.
While the House fumbled this key deadline, Johnson was not at the Capitol. On Saturday he instead attended the Army-Navy football game along with Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Trump benefactor Elon Musk.
Since taking the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans have governed in a state of almost perennial chaos. The party could not decide on a consensus speaker and then after Kevin McCarthy was selected, he was removed from power.
Because McCarthy and now Johnson have had such a hard time getting the party in line, they have had to rely on Democratic votes to pass key legislation keeping the nation funded. Even after Republicans held on to the House in the 2024 election, the margin of the party’s control will be virtually unchanged from two years ago.
The incoming administration hopes to implement many of the unpopular ideas in Project 2025 (despite Trump’s claims that he had no connection to the conservative agenda), but the party’s track record of legislative incompetence may show another path forward.
Republicans had unified control in Trump’s first two years of the presidency and the party failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) or pass an infrastructure bill (President Joe Biden did). Now they cannot even agree on a spending bill with just a few days to go.
The future, even with Republicans in control of the House, Senate, and White House, does not look bright for Johnson and his party in Congress.
Scottie's Playtime 
Failing to fund the government is a feature, not a bug of Idiokakistocracy. Their only plan is to smash everything in sight…the Oligarchs are betting they can do anything they want to us and we’ll just meekly accept it.
I’d like to think otherwise, but I fear they’re absolutely correct. We’re all gonna go through a bunch of shit, and it’s just not going to get better any time soon, like in my lifetime.
Dark Ages 2.0 is here, baybee!
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Hi Bruce. Ali just posted how that local governments have to use the public treasury to help working people whose wages do not pay enough to cover housing costs. Which is being done to solve homelessness but in reality just gives more profit to employers who refuse to pay living wages and to large housing conglomerates that rake in huge profits driving up housing costs while doing no maintenance or repairs. It gives cover to those groups and lets them get away with ripping off the people. It is socializing the costs and privatizing their profits. Make the public pay the costs and the businesses rake in the profit. Hugs
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That’s been Walmart’s business model for decades now.
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No, what I posted about is not that at all. It is about universal basic income for people. I wrote more over there.
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Hi Ali. From my reply to you there.
Hi Ali. Read the article again please. From the article: It’s more important than ever that state and local leaders choose strategies that help people with low incomes meet their housing needs with dignity, rather than punishing people experiencing homelessness through fining and, in some cases, arresting and incarcerating them for sleeping outside when they have nowhere safe to go, which evidence shows are ineffective, costly, and racially discriminatory strategies.
Why do these people have low incomes? Because the employers don’t pay living wages! Where is the money going to? Housing companies that charge far too much for rent and buy up all homes for sale in the area! But there is more in the article.
From the article: Guaranteed income (GI) is emerging as one strategy for helping people afford housing and other expenses like food, clothing, and transportation. Unlike universal basic income, which proposes giving a standard periodic cash payment to all individuals, guaranteed income provides cash assistance to people based on a determined need — such as experiencing housing instability or having income below a certain level — with assistance typically ranging between $500 and $1000 a month.
Based on need! I stand by my comment!
It’s about paying everyone who’s born a basic income because they’re born. It would be a stipend, but a person could live on it month to month.
What you are talking about it UBI. I support UBI just like you do. But the article makes clear this is not Universal Basic Income which will do all you said. But even with the bad things I mentioned if people need assistance to get housing and food that help should be there. But accompanying that is the need to force employers to pay more and to have affordable housing not owned by big business that requires huge rents to make the most profit. Hugs
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Yes, what I am talking about is UBI. Also known in the US as guaranteed income, because UBI still has a “communist” cast on it. Guaranteed income is starting small and slowly. It is based on need right now, because it’s the way to sell it to the rest of the populace. So, it isn’t UBI, it is leading to it by showing people how guaranteed income/universal basic income solves so many problems. Including the anger of the lower-paid right wing who feel they have no freedom because they’re bound to a low paycheck.
This is not as much about “solving homelessness” or gentrification, or the things you’re focussed on. But, the unhoused camping around is a huge deal for lots of people, and guaranteed income leading to UBI is a way to assist getting both issues into not-closed but not-all-the-way-open minds in the areas it’s being tried, so it can spread. It’s a small step in the direction of a hugely progressive thing. It is a good thing.
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I should mention that I’ve been closely following this issue for years and years, especially in countries where it is as if they’ve always had the income. It may be that I’m able, because of that background, to glean more from an article than others who have other issues but UBI is a background; I know I keep up with terms and trends in the US because of that.
For that and for not explaining the article better when I posted it, I apologize; I expected everyone to see what I can see because I’ve followed the issue for almost 3 decades (since I was pregnant and saw how things ought to be more clearly than ever. That happens.)
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Ali, good wonderful caring grand person you are, no apology needed. You saw something not quite in the article, we all have done it. You wrote about something you believe strongly in that the US needs to have. I have done the same. And as I just wrote I agree with you on that.
My only issue is the article was not about UBI, and it’s framing makes the idea more like crowdfunding for public needs. At the risk of repeating my point, it shifts the burden from the wealthy and those with the money to the collective public taxpayers.
Like you I have been interested in the idea since the 1980s when a very wise Welch man I was close to in Germany when I was in the US Army explained it to me. I wish I could have spent my life learning from him. He was a true progressive.
I am glad you support the idea of Universal Basic Income, and we do need to push for it. But again we need to make sure it is not on the terms of the modern robber barons. Hugs
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Hello Ali. As I wrote I went by the article. Staying with that it is a shame the US has fallen so far into the unrestrained capitalism that the government has to subsidize the basic needs of people who can’t live on the wages paid by employers. For 30 years that was the Walmart mode of operation, their workers were the biggest users of food assistance and other government assistance in areas with Walmarts. The workers should be angry Ali, but angry at the employers and corporate housing conglomerates that price them out of housing.
As to how to sell UBI to the public, I disagree this is the way to do it. This normalizes the idea of the workers stuck taking the conditions placed on them by wealthy corporations that they then had to turn to the government, which in reality is the rest of the public, to make up the difference so they can live. That sets in to the public mind that the private sector is in charge and government is a go fund me to help the people / public survive. Crowdfunding is already the go to for the needy / poor for everything from healthcare to simple transportation now. That is how the wealthy want it, put the burden on the lower incomes like they are doing with the tax burden to run the country.
As to UBI, Universal Basic Income, other countries do this, just like universal health care for their people and other social services. They do it by reigning in corporate greed and taxing the wealthy. All the people in the US need to do is look outside our own country, something the wealthy try to prevent by drumming in the idea that the US is number 1 and the best of everything. It is for the very wealthy to maintain control and keep raiding the public treasury.
Andrew Yang gave the best case for UBI. He reached far too big with his goal, but all he said about it is true. Ali back in the 1980s a smart Welch man told me the future. He said that with automation and advances in technology people wouldn’t be able to find work unless society changed its view of working. For some they would share a job. They would do it a few days a week and then someone else would do it the rest of the week, or people would work only four hour days. That was how we did it in church boarding schools, 4 hours schooling, lunch, four hours working for either the school or a local factory.
But that required everyone receive an income that supported a decent living with not only basic needs met but also some luxuries. Then the people would have to be taught to be productive in their free time. Such as learning new things for free such as higher education, singing songs that no one would hear, writing books no one would read, just anything productive instead of destructive, which humans can tend to if they have too much free time and no guidance.
Everything the wealthy have tried to portray as sucking off the government teat, the person on the dole in England, the way people look at people on disability such as me. They pain such people as refusing to work to live life large on other’s money. That is the mindset you are fighting now.
So to wrap up this long comment … yes I am known for them. Hey I just got an hour and half of sleep, the first in days so my mind is clearer. UBI is not only needed but something we must do. But the framing and roll out must not be framed as an acceptance of the unrestrained capitalist wealthy want it to be. People’s needs must be met and the corporations and the wealthy MUST be forced to pay for it, not crowd funded by the public. Hugs
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This article lays it out well. People forget about these things, but they’ve happened already; we know how this episode goes because we’ve seen it. sigh
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Hi Ali. What really upsets me is they are ignoring the must pass stuff to still shove culture war shit into bills. The must pass military spending bill that no one wants to vote against at the last minute Johnson inserted an addition not vetted by any committee but was wanted by the right wing fundamentalist members of maga. Military members have little to no choice over which states they land in. If it comes down to staying in the military or getting the help they need for their children they will leave the service. This is horrible for retention and moral. Plus this is dependents the bill targets not serving members. It up ends the entire parent’s rights argument they use else where. It frustrates me democrats are not fighting back but meekly accepting this. Republicans know how to use power and play hard ball but democrats just meekly accept it. They raise their hands and say, what could we do. This is why we lost to tRump who fights everything even when he is known to be wrong and often wins even then. Hugs
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We’re seeing this is real time, the gerentocracy of the Dems are going to make the ranking member of the Oversight Committee some 74-year-old guy instead of AOC who is whip smart, articulate, tough on questioning and with a huge social media reach…
It’s like they want to lose…
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Hi Bruce. Yes all because of 84 year old corporate democrat Pelosi desperate to maintain the corporate control over the congress lobbied the fellow corporate democrats to vote for the old guy and freeze the young progressives out. Remember when Pelosi made a rule that any member who supported a challenger to a sitting member of the House wouldn’t get any money or support from democrats … only for Pelosi to then support the corporate challenger to a sitting progressive member of the squad. She loves to brag how she was so progressive in her young days … but she is the majority reason that the democrats went so far to the right over the years, forgetting the working people and lower incomes to cozy up to big money donors. Hugs
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