What the shutdown opens up for Congress: Our view
What an embarrassment!
The federal government partially shut down over the weekend for a period that might be over by the time you read these words, or might go on for days or weeks.
How and when this shutdown ends, both sides have already revealed themselves as more adept at finger-pointing, blame-shifting, hypocrisy and playing to their bases than they are at responding to the needs of their country.
OTHER VIEWS: Who’s to blame for government shutdown?
The proximate cause of the shutdown was the Senate’s failure to approve a four-week spending bill, the fourth such temporary fix in a fiscal year that is already nearly one-third over. The “no” votes consisted largely of Democrats miffed that the measure didn’t provide deportation relief for 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to America as children.
The Democrats’ stance puts them in direct contradiction to their position in 2013, when they took to their soap boxes to decry a Republican-engineered shutdown designed to press a hopeless effort to force then-President Obama to dismantle his signature health insurance measure.
But it is not only Democrats who should take heat this time. The shutdown occurred after President Trump brought leaders of both parties to the White House, asked them to negotiate a deal, then profanely pulled the rug out from under them once a bipartisan group of senators presented him with such an arrangement.
The obvious compromise — pairing a fix for the “dreamers” with money for border security — would likely pass the House and the Senate by comfortable margins. But the Republicans who control both chambers of Congress have shown scant inclination to bring it up for a vote.
What this sorry episode showed is the ongoing decline in civic and patriotic values of our nation’s elected officials, who seemed to think the country consists only of their respective right and left wings.
As for Democrats, might we suggest a change in tactics. Their cause — protecting nearly a million people from deportation to countries they barely know — is worthy, but shutting down the government is not the way to go about achieving it.
As for Republicans, we would propose what we have long suggested. They need to put some distance between themselves and their mercurial, erratic president. The party already faces a challenge as America’s demographics evolve. Trump only steepens that challenge by hardening anti-Republican views among the parts of the electorate that are growing.
This bickering over government funding does no favors to anyone. While it might seem like the biggest losers are federal employees, or Americans or foreign tourists trying to visit a federal site, the real losers are the two parties.
They might think they are drawing lines in the sand. What they are really doing is digging their own graves.
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