Amendments. They’re looking for the opportunity to give amendments.
This is all Democratic leadership is capable of coming up with. They want to be able to ask “pretty please” to the Republican majority before their suggestions get voted down and they vote for this piece of crap CR anyway. This is all they’re asking for. Nothing to stop Trump and Musk from running roughshod. Nothing to rein DOGE in. Nothing to reverse the damage DOGE already did. Just the opportunity to give some suggestions that they know will be ignored by the GOP in the end.
Democrat leadership is spineless.
The Dem leadership just wants plausible deniability that they didn’t “cause the government shutdown”. This way, it is the Republicans who denied the path out of a government shutdown, and thus it’s their fault.
Nobody will care about whose fault it is because Republican voters get their news from partisan media. If they’re told it’s the Democrats’ fault, they’ll believe it. A simpler message has a better chance of breaking through: “Republicans have a majority everywhere and still shut down the government because they can’t govern.”
If you get involved at all with their games, you’re just starting a back and forth about specific amendments that will just make things so murky even people that follow the news won’t even understand by the end.
If you are going to go with amendments, just have simple demands that are universally popular (stuff like: fire Musk, stop the tariffs, …).