The Shutdown, Hostages, and Humanitarian Crises

Let’s see if I have this straight. The government is partly shut down because Congress can’t pass a bill authorizing the employees’ salaries. But they could and did authorize post-shutdown back pay for those workers. In other words, Congress voted to pay them for work they can’t do because Congress wouldn’t vote to pay them for it.

And Congressional Republicans won’t agree to that because Democrats won’t agree to a border wall — which Republicans wouldn’t agree to when they controlled both houses.

They say they won’t vote for a bill the President won’t sign. But Congress can override a president’s veto with a two-thirds vote. Republicans and Democrats could agree on a bill to simply reopen the government, and pass it over a veto. However, Republicans won’t do that because they’re now hostage to Trump; they fear losing the next primary to a challenger he backs. So much for checks and balances and co-equal branches of government.

Trump is holding the government, and 800,000 workers’ salaries, hostage to his demand for a wall — which, again, he couldn’t get during the two years his own party controlled Congress.

Calling this blackmail is not a metaphor. He’s saying, “Meet my demand, or else these government workers get hurt.” In any other context, such extortion lands you in prison.

This is actually costing the government — and taxpayers — a lot more than the $5.7 billion Trump is demanding for his wall. It’s also exceeded by the cost — financial, material, emotional — to those 800,000 federal workers. A humanitarian crisis, to use his words. And it’s also exceeded by the hit to the overall economy.

The “great deal maker” triggered this mess with no strategy for getting out of it. So now we’re stuck like Brer Rabbit with the tar baby. The same might be said of our electing him.

Saying Democrats oppose border security, wanting “open borders,” is such a lie that the word “lie” is inadequate. Let alone saying they want criminals and drugs and terrorists to flood into the country. As if we have no border security, and only now must start on it.

And he says there’s now a humanitarian crisis at the southern border. As if for the past two years Republicans didn’t control the whole government without building a wall (and without a shutdown aimed at getting it). And as if the inflow of migrants isn’t in fact way down from prior periods.

And as if Trump’s foolish wall would matter, when the vast majority of migrants, and of drugs, come in through official border crossings and airports.

But there is indeed a humanitarian crisis at the border. It’s Trump’s cruel, inhuman treatment of migrants. Including taking thousands of children away from parents, often without even any tracking, so they’ll never again see their kids, penned in wretched concentration camps.

A crime against humanity, to America’s everlasting shame.
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