Saturday, January 20, 2018

The Trump Shutdown

It isn't an entire year that Donald Trump has been president, and yet, with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the government is now facing a shutdown because, as everyone probably should have known during 2016 but just enough failed to take into account--he hasn't the least clue what he's doing. 

He articulated a lot of promises during the campaign about building a wall that Mexico would pay for (but it most certainly will not) and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. That sort of thing doesn't seem very in line with the idea of crafting "a bill of love" with respects to DACA recipients, anymore than his basically ending it by executive order did. 

It really doesn't make sense then, that Democrats should be faulted for the GOP deciding to hold both DACA and CHIP beneficiaries hostage in the continuing resolution debate. And yes, this is exactly what they had done, as Mitch McConnell, may his neck skin rise up to swathe his breathing holes, clearly Tweeted:


The intention being to bully the Democrats into picking CHIP kids over DACA, and probably ensuring DACA protection would never happen. I mean, the GOP basically considers DACA to be an amnesty. Trump put DACA on the line. Majority Leader McConnell never did boo about renewing CHIP. If the GOP cared about either, they could have easily ensured their continuation--even without Democratic agreement (although they would have had it). Instead, they held them to lord over Democrats for a continuing resolution that there's no real reason to believe the Democrats would have been against if there hadn't been hostage-taking by the party that happens to be the "government shutdown experts" in the first place. Thus resulting in the first time a government shutdown has occurred with a White House and Congress both in the same party's power.

And of course it's Republicans. Because they can't govern, because they don't seem to know what government is for.

Trump, the populist common guy communicator and all around deal-making sonofabitch, who bragged to all and sundry that he could get shit done, got no shit done. The wall isn't happening, the GOP, trying to pin the failure of the CR on Dems not loving DACA enough just made it clear who really is supporting Dreamers, and in the meanwhile, funding CHIP is now and always has been a thing McConnell could introduce, right?

The GOP owns this, but as with so many things a lot of people have a piece of the ownership of, let's put Trump's name on this one. This is the Trump Shutdown. The Shithole Shutdown. This is his inaugural 1st anniversary present.  He said he alone could fix it--he can't even explain it. 

And tomorrow, there will be marches. Because we resist.

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