Party sticks to its guns on healthcare and says it’s willing to hold out – much to the delight of its progressive supporters

When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he was relishing his standoff with the Republicans.

“Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republican part believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.

Outrage followed from Republicans, who printed out the Senate minority leader’s remark on posters and condemned it before press conferences. The shutdown has prompted federal agencies to close or curtail operations nationwide, and forced hundreds of thousands of employees to stay home without immediate pay. Schumer, Republicans argued, was being callous.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Billionaire owned media will never call an actual populist a populist…

      They want to keep it a dirty word, when it literally just means putting the average citizen’s needs above the needs of the wealthiest.

      If we don’t have populism, the alternative is an oligarchy. Those are the two ends of the scale, we can get something near the middle, but it at least has to be fair.

      If the wealthiest have an advantage, they’ll never stop accumulating wealth.

      And wealth is finite, for them to accumulate more, they got to take it from someone else.