Explain Like I'm Five

You see, a large part of the people in in this country have somehow convinced themselves that helping poor people is a bad thing.

Illegal Immigrants are stealing from me, personally. I should be richer and healthier and happier than I am right now. But every time I turn on the TV, I see grainy video footage of someone with excessively brown skin (or perhaps blue hair) saying or doing something I don't like. And then I get a paycheck in the mail and its too small to cover my increasingly bloated household budget. The people on the TV are telling me that the grainy video footage is why costs are going up far faster than my household income can cover it.

Poverty leads to anxiety. Poor personal health and mental wellness fuels my mental instability. The people on the TV tell me that things used to be much better, but all these illegals ruined it. They're breaking the law and nobody is doing anything to stop them. But now, at long last, we have someone brave enough and strong enough and charismatic enough to lead a revolution against the illegals. We have an army now and that army is bravely fighting for our freedom by catching the illegals and punishing them.

Once we've finished getting rid of all the illegals, we're going to see a big wave of prosperity. And then I, a poor person, am going to benefit enormously.

But the Far Left liberal elites don't want me to enjoy that prosperity. So they're trying to stop our brave heroes by taking away their money and wasting it on stupid Chinese Hoaxes and welfare for Muslim terrorists. This has been a plot I've heard about for a long time, because the people on the radio told me about it when I was much younger. And so we're in an existential fight for the soul of the country.

Really it’s everybody’s fault for letting people who think helping poor people is a bad thing become so powerful that they now run the country.

I agree with you completely. I'm poor and I'm tired of the Radical Leftists saying I shouldn't receive any help.

Mr. Donald President Trump is changing that. We're Making American Great Again. Anyone who can't see that is being brainwashed. I support our President. I love our President. I love Jesus Christ, because he also wanted to help poor people like me. I'm going to join ICE and help my nation become strong again. And then I'm going to join the National Guard so that we can bring this freedom to the rest of the world.

We need to beat the evil communists and radical socialists who are destroying our country. We need to do this before I get any sicker and poorer and older. If we don't do it now, we're going to lose. I don't want my white children to grow up in a world where they are treated badly. I want them to rule the world. So I'm going to fight and do whatever it takes to make sure that we secure the existence of our people and a future for white children

Adding this because I don't see it explained anywhere else:

It takes 60/100 votes to pass the budget bills in the Senate, instead of 51, because the Senate still has a filibuster. The minority Democrats have the power to stop the vote from coming up by simply talking on the floor forever until the Republicans give up and go home.

The 53-47 vote was for a cloture motion, which is to put time limits on debate on a particular budget bill. The rules don't let Dems filibuster the cloture motion for obvious reasons, so that vote happened. But it takes 60 votes to pass cloture, so it went down.

Now, there are some resolutions that don't involve coming to a compromise:

• the Democrats could choose not to do the filibuster. Then the bill would come up, and they could all vote against it, but it could pass on 53 votes.
• the Senate could change the rules to get rid of filibuster. This is usually called the "nuclear option" because it removes the 60 vote barrier using a rules vote that only needs 51 to pass. The procedure is to make someone actually start a filibuster, then raise a point of order that filibustering member is taking too long. The Parliamentarian will deny the point of order based on the current rules, but that can be appealed to the whole Senate on a majority vote. And the point of order is not debatable.

And since the GOP shits on everything left of far right atm, they get to be petty and maybe get some ground back. Plus last time around, the Dems had leverage and blew it spectacularly. Schumer wrote a strongly worded letter I believe. I feel bad for federal workers, but this government needs a rework anyhow. And not the technocratic, corpo, or fascist facelift some seem to yearn for.

I always wondered how are furloughed people tolerating not getting paid and not quitting. With how frequent it happens, some has to be looking for a new job. Yes I know some people can't find jobs outside of govt right now

people talk about separation of church and state, but i'm pretty sure america has missed the even more important separation of government and state

the way it should work and how i think it works in most places these days; is that the parliament is the main thing that keeps things running and is made up of hundreds of people from different parties, and then on top of that you have the government which is a subset of those people who make larger decisions. And if for some reason the government ceases being able to function (e.g. because enough parliamentarians oppose the current government) then it mostly just means that the big decisions have to be delayed until government can be restored, and aside from that no one notices much of anything.

Very true.

And the people making these decisions are all multi-millionaires themselves and completely insulated from the fallout, which to me is the most egregious aspect, but here in the US you basically can't run for office if you aren't already wealthy.

I think it passed the house, a simple majority, but got tied up in the senate were you need 60 votes(60%). So without some democrats willing to vote yes in the senate it got hung up. Republicans were unwilling to negotiate on key items and that is where the finger pointing from both sides come from. So in away yes the democrats are “at fault” for doing their jobs and not voting yes on something they do not agree with. But so are the republicans for showing no willingness to discuss and change things to get it to pass. You know the thing that they are suppost to do.

Schiff even went so far as to add a Vader clip to describe current negotiation tactics.

It makes every bit of sense to reference vader in this current government. Even if you get an agreement with trump to fund the things you want to fund, the way he is operating right now he can just impound the funds anyway and send them off to wherever else he wants.

There's no point in negotiating with this president or this congress when they let this president impound whatever he likes, fund whatever he likes, and then get a series of high fives and "no notes" decisions from the supreme court for doing so.

They have absolutely no incentive to negotiate when the deals are toilet paper, and no incentive to vote for continuing to fund a government that currently doesn't fund itself according to its laws.

They should allow it to shut down until the constitutional order is restored (which may be never). The repubs can change the senate rules and nuke the last vestiges of the filibuster to reopen the government with a simple majority. Democrats should force them to do so.

Trump has ordered Republicans not to negotiate with Democrats because a shutdown gives him more power to fire people from the executive branch.

It's a legitimate question, it's not a lie that Democrats are blocking the GOP on this and you need to get educated on how your government works.

tl;dr: A budget bill needs a supermajority to pass and be fillibuster proof.