Early December: Hostages released in massive year-end budget deal just in time for Christmas recess
Also May-November: Complaints about all of the hostage-taking from whomever wants the hostage released.
Last year, the biggest hostage was COVID relief. For much of the year, McConnell held it hostage to his demand for a legal liability waiver Dems oppose; Dems held hostage over that and desire for a bigger package.
I remember in the Bush era Pelosi held trade agreements hostage by nuking fast-track authority in the Rules Committee. She held Iraq War funding hostage for months as she sought a timeline for withdrawal in 2007. She caved, but added a 40% minimum wage hike. (Bush signed it.)
Everybody takes legislative hostages.
It isn’t the most efficient way to legislate. But the government eventually gets funded every year without fail, the debt limit gets extended, the 9/11 responders eventually get health benefits.
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“Castrate, kill, remove voting rights,” the soon-to-be Georgia sheriff's deputy wrote in a text found by the FBI. “The only problem is you can’t expect to get them all that way.”
"I’m going to charge them with whatever felonies I can to take away their ability to vote," read one text. One text described beating up a Black person as "stress relief." (!)
The deputy and ex-Marine was found with an arsenal of weapons, pled guilty to a weapons charge and will be sentenced in August, AJC reports.
You'd have to be deaf not to have known Democrats were going to seek a reconciliation package too.
I've been speaking to Republican and Democratic senators on this very point. Rs oppose the reconciliation package, but they weren't pretending it doesn't exist. It was part of the deal from the first Biden-Capito & Co meeting that Ds/Biden would pursue a follow-on package.
Central tension here is Rs want to kill and/or shrink the reconciliation package, & Ds/WH have been trying to make it essential. The new part was Biden explicitly saying no signing this package w/o reconciliation too. But a little redundant after Pelosi said she'd hold the bill.