Democrats Fundraising on Government Shutdown

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is using the potential for a government shutdown as a fundraising tool. Defending 23 Senate seats in the next election, the committee has distributed an e-mail to supporters in hopes of raising $100,000 in the next 36 hours.

The DSCC is looking to raise $100,000 in the next 36 hours “to call out the GOP extremists and preserve our Senate majority,” DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil wrote in the email.

“They won’t budge until health care reform is repealed, Planned Parenthood is defunded, Pell Grants are slashed, and NPR and PBS are off the air,” Cecil wrote. “We can’t allow these extremists to repeal the last 100 years of progress, and you know that’s what they’re truly after. If they get their hands on the Senate, they’ll do just that.”

Meanwhile, the House Republicans have cobbled together a Continuing Resolution for a one week reprieve from a government shutdown and guarantees funding for the Defense Department so that the military members and their families don't feel the financial pinch to add to the already heightened stress of deployed loved ones.

The President has vowed to veto another Continuing Resolution, though.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Thursday following the President’s threat to veto the bipartisan troop funding bill:

“There is nothing in the bipartisan troop funding bill that the House passed today that has not already been agreed to by Democrats in Congress, or requested by the administration. It funds our troops at a time when our military is engaged in three overseas conflicts, it cuts Washington spending by an amount that Democrat leaders have already said is reasonable, and the policy prescriptions it contains have been previously agreed to by nearly every Democrat in the Senate and signed into law by the President. And let’s not forget, this is the only proposal out there that keeps the government open. I also disagree with the President’s characterization of this bipartisan troop funding bill as a ‘distraction.’ If the President wants to shut down the government over this bipartisan troop funding bill, that is his prerogative. But I would urge him to reconsider his veto threat and join us in preventing a shutdown instead. This is the only bill that would do that. He should sign it.”

It is clear. The playbook is a well-used one from the Democrats. The goal for them is to allow a shutdown and then blame the "extremist" Republicans, in particular the Tea Party conservatives. They think this ploy will serve them well with votes in 2012. It comes at the expense of military families, middle class government workers - especially those living paycheck to paycheck - and those applying for government backed home loans, and so on. The President has the discrepancy to name who is and isn't an essential employee and he seems willing to partner with Senate Democrats to the bitter end.

The difference between the Republican plan and that of the Democrats amounts to about $7 billion, which is less than minuscule in the framework of the big picture. With an additional sticking point of riders to the budget bill - social conservatives demands and fiscal conservatives trying to stop funding for Obamacare implementation and defunding NPR and PBS, so far neither side has blinked.

This is no way to govern.