Dear Mr. President:
On January 3rd, it was my privilege as Speaker to invite you to deliver the State of the Union address on January 29th. The Constitution calls for the President to “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” During the 19th Century and up until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, these annual State of the Union messages were delivered to Congress in writing. And since the start of modern budgeting in Fiscal Year 1977, a State of the Union address has never been delivered during a government shutdown.
In September 2018, Secretary Nielsen designated State of the Union Addresses as National Special Security Events (NSSEs), recognizing the need for “the full resources of the Federal Government to be brought to bear” to ensure the security of these events. The extraordinary demands presented by NSSEs require weeks of detailed planning with dozens of agencies working together to prepare for the safety of all participants.
The U.S. Secret Service was designated as the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating, planning, exercising, and implementing security for National Special Security Events by Public Law 106-544, December 19, 2000. However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.
Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
NANCY PELOSI
Speaker of the House
January 16, 2019
Couldn’t have done it better myself.
Now, does she have the power to do this? Oh my yes. Members of the Executive Branch (with the exception of the Vice President who is also President of the Senate) can only speak to members of either Chamber by invitation. Of course they can extend that privilege to anyone they want, as the did with Winston Churchill.
Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is no Churchill (though Winnie was terribly misguided in other ways he was legitimately viewed as a great hero of WW II, moderately competent, and could speak in complete sentences and paragraphs).
The other thing about it is that Joint Sessions of Congress, which the State of the Union is delivered to, can only be called by mutual agreement of Senate and House Majority Leadership. Nancy says no? It ain’t happening. Also they are typically held in the House Chamber because the Senate is simply not big enough to accommodate 435 extra people plus a ton of guests. Speaker Pelosi is within her rights to order the Sargent at Arms for the House and the Capitol Hill Police to lock the door and turn out the lights.
Oh, it sucks to be Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio tonight. Of course he craves attention more than anything and to take away his Public Fawning Ritual is like taking a Smartphone away from a teenager.
“Daddy! Mommy is being so unfair!”
Not only that, because Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio can neither read nor write it was being crafted by the Racist Steve Miller as a 45 minute pitch to blame Democrats for the Shutdown and I’m sure it would have gone just as well as the 12/11/18 meeting.
If we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government, absolutely.
And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems, and drugs pouring into our country.
So I will take the mantle. I will be the to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security.
Or the 1/9/19 meeting where Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio screamed at Nancy and Chuck for about 20 minutes and then banged his teeny tiny little hands on the table and stomped out, slamming the door behind him so you could tell exactly how pissed off he was that his tantrum didn’t get him what he wanted. Republicans tried to deny it but while they were busy lying (literally at the very same time) Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio was busy Twitting-
Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!
Or the 8 minute Prime Time Address he had to beg for which was a mere re-hash of his standard stump rant sandwiched like a squirt of sugared lard between 2 crunchy fund raising appeals. It was as bad as an Oreo. Funny thing that as bad and stiff as they were Nancy and Chuck beat him in the Ratings.
Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is losing this debate, badly. Our old buddy poblano says-
“Trump’s approval ratings had been steady at about 42 percent for several months before the shutdown. Since then, they’ve been declining at a fairly linear rate of about half a point for every week that the shutdown has been underway, while his disapproval rating has increased by half a point per week,” he explained.
Silver noted the 2020 election is still a long way off, but said, “there are some reasons for Trump and Republicans to worry that the shutdown could have both short- and long-term downsides.”
Trump could be in the worst political position of his presidency by March.
“For one thing, there’s no particular sign that the shutdown is set to end any time soon. And if the decline in Trump’s approval rating were to continue at the same rate that it has so far, it would take his political standing from bad to worse,” he explained. “By Jan. 29, for example, the day that Trump was originally set to deliver the State of the Union address before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disinvited him from addressing Congress, his approval rating would be 39.3 percent, and his disapproval rating would be 55.9 percent.”
“By March 1, at which point funding for federal food stamps could run out, his approval rating and disapproval rating would be 36.9 percent and 58.4 percent, respectively, roughly matching the lowest point of his presidency so far,” he noted.
Silver also said that the shutdown may be harming Trump with Capitol Hill Republicans.
“Congressional Republicans are not a group Trump can easily afford to lose. They have a lot of power to check Trump’s presidency, from modest measures such as treating his Cabinet nominations with more scrutiny to extreme ones like supporting his impeachment and removal from office,” he reminded.
Silver also noted, “the shutdown has prompted Trump to double down on his all-base, all-the-time strategy.”
“The lesson of the midterms, in my view, was fairly clear: Trump’s base isn’t enough,” he concluded. “Despite some initial attempts at reaching out to the center, such as in passing a criminal justice bill in December and issuing trial balloons about an infrastructure package, Trump’s strategy of shutting down the government to insist on a border wall was aimed at placating his critics on the right, such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and members of the House Freedom Caucus.”
Taken together, 2020 may look more like the 2018 midterms than the 2016 election when Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.
“In the midterms, voting closely tracked Trump’s approval ratings, and he paid the price for his unpopularity,” he reminded.
Brilliant! The Shutdown is also tanking the Economy (over and above Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s ignorant Tariffs).
Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth
By Jim Tankersley, The New York Times
Jan. 15, 2019
The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.
The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.
While Vice President Mike Pence previously played down the shutdown’s effects amid a “roaring” economy, White House officials are now cautioning Mr. Trump about the toll it could take on a sustained economic expansion. Mr. Trump, who has hitched his political success to the economy, also faces other economic headwinds, including slowing global growth, a trade war with China and the waning effects of a $1.5 trillion tax cut.
…
For now, the White House shows no signs of being ready to relent, and Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, continued to blame Democrats for the economic damage.“Congress needs to look at the harms that we’re talking about,” Mr. Hassett said, “and address them.”
Mr. Hassett said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)
Tired of winning yet?
Nancy Pelosi Is Winning
by Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
1/16/19
(H)igh-minded centrists are urging Pelosi and the Democrats to compromise. “Rather than talk about the immorality of a wall,” The Washington Post recently urged, “Democrats could use their leverage to achieve a truly moral purpose. In return for a few billion dollars for a segment of the president’s wall … Democrats might permanently shield from deportation well over 1 million ‘dreamers.’” A recent Bloomberg editorial scolded Democrats for wanting “to deny the other [side] anything that might be portrayed as a victory,” and warned that “the only alternative to compromise, now that power in Washington is more equally divided, is paralysis.”
But Pelosi knows that the alternative to Democratic compromise isn’t necessarily paralysis. It may be Democratic triumph. Trump, like Bush, has picked a fight that is popular with conservatives but unpopular with the public at large. Most Americans don’t think there’s a border crisis, don’t support a border wall, and blame Trump for the shutdown. As a result, Republican members of Congress are under more political pressure to back down than their Democratic counterparts, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more that pressure should grow. For the time being, at least, conservative opposition has forced Trump to shelve talk of declaring a national emergency. All of which means that the most likely outcome to the current standoff is that Trump caves. And since the wall was Trump’s signature campaign promise, such a retreat could depress conservative enthusiasm and impair his chances in 2020. “If he gives in,” Lindsey Graham recently warned, “that’s probably the end of his presidency.”
That’s what Pelosi is aiming for. In pure policy terms, there’s a case for compromise. Arguably, it’s worth wasting a few billion dollars on a border wall to safeguard the “Dreamers” who are stuck in an agonizing legal limbo. But Pelosi is focused on something bigger: the emasculation of the president. For years, Democrats have wondered when their leaders would start playing tough. Turns out Pelosi has been doing so all along.
Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has decided to throw another tantrum, canceling a Congressional Delegation visit of both Republicans and Democrats to visit troops in Afghanistan (the stopover in Brussels is to refuel and consult the NATO Commanders who invoked their mutual defense responsibilities under the North Atlantic Charter to assist us against the Taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack on the territory of the Continental United States, the only time in the 70 year existence of the organization it has been, the Egyptian component is simply a lie).
Of course it was secret. Afghanistan is a War Zone! Of course they can’t fly commercial. AFGHANISTAN IS A WAR ZONE!
Pelosi and the Democrats will not be swayed. Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s only choice is complete capitulation and blaming it on Mitch McConnell.
Even that will not save him from Mueller’s net and his litany of lies.