(2025-03-10) Will Dems Pick Up Their Sword

Josh Marshall: Will Dems Pick Up Their Sword? (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 Musk crowd a massive tax cut.

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.

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

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.

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