4 Hard Lessons from the Trump Government Shutdown
January 24, 2018 in Blogs
1. Trump’s words are irrelevant.
In the normal scheme of the American government, the president has the final say. When everybody else wants to avoid making a decision, the chief executive has to execute. As the sign on Harry Truman’s Oval Office said, “The buck stops here.”
In the Trump White House, the buck stops wherever. As the shutdown talks went on, the president’s position on immigration legislation was a mystery to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels going to this issue on the floor, but actually dealing with a bill that has a chance to become law and therefore solve the problem,” McConnell said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said working with Trump was “like negotiating with Jell-O.”
The deal that led to the shutdown was negotiated by McConnell and Schumer without input from the White House. McConnell played the role of negotiator in chief, and he stuck with Trump’s nativist base. Trump’s sporadic rhetorical desire to make a deal to protect immigrant youth was irrelevant to the outcome.
Schumer’s Jell-O quip was correct, but raised the question, how come the gelatinous blob is claiming victory?
2. Democrats are dreamers, not Dreamers.
The whole point of the shutdown, at least for the Democrats, was to force President Trump to honor his promise last September to protect the Dreamers, the 800,000 young American immigrants who face deportation to countries they barely know.
In the end, the Democrats voted to end the shutdown in return for funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which the Republicans had been holding hostage, and yet another promise from McConnell that he would bring legislation to protect the Dreamers.
Dream on, said MoveOn.org. “This is a bad, outrageous deal,” the progressive pressure group said. “Trump and Republicans in Congress stood with their anti-immigrant nativist base, and too many Democrats backed down, abandoned Dreamers, and failed to fight for their values.”
In other words, the Democrats voted as if the Republicans were acting in …read more
Source: ALTERNET
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