For the 13th time this month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer voted with his party’s coalition to keep the government shutdown going into its 29th day. Yes, Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, but the Senate minority can keep blocking the continuing resolution passed by the House in mid-September.
Few could sum up the shutdown as well as veteran journalist Britt Hume: “The gold standard for ending a shutdown has been a clean continuing resolution. … That is what the Republicans have passed in the House, that is what they sent to the Senate, and that is what Senate Democrats have blocked using the filibuster.”
You know — the same “Jim Crow” filibuster Democrats desperately wanted to kill when they were in power.
If it weren’t for double standards, Democrats wouldn’t have any.
For the first couple of weeks, the shutdown didn’t cause too much disruption outside the Beltway. Illustrative of how little we actually need the federal government in our daily lives, life went on without a hiccup.
That’s beginning to change.
Military personnel will miss their first paycheck this Friday. Air traffic controllers just missed their first. If those controllers start calling in sick or taking vacation days to avoid working for free, the resulting delays or cancellations could wreak havoc on business travel and holiday plans. “This is really easy, open up the government,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. “Don’t hold our skies hostage.”
Meanwhile, the fund for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (a.k.a. food stamps) runs out on November 1. It’ll be interesting to see who’s angriest — people who work really hard and then don’t get paid, or unemployed brats posting TikTok videos demanding entitlements they did nothing to earn and threatening retribution by robbing grocery stores.
The political pain will be acute for both parties. A few Republicans are even pushing targeted bills to fund only the aforementioned items. Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, advocating his bill to extend SNAP. He (wrongly) appealed to Scripture to argue that the government must feed people, while also making quite valid points about how the cost of living has ballooned in recent years. “What cost $100 five years ago costs $125 today,” he noted. “So if you’re not earning 25 percent more than you were five years ago, you’re getting poorer.”
He left out the part about inflation being entirely due to profligate government spending on “free” stuff, or why more of the same actually helps.
In any case, Senate Majority Leader John Thune isn’t interested, saying, “Most people recognize the way to get out of this mess is to open up the government.”
Democrats, of course, are still demanding a permanent expansion of the “temporary” increase in ObamaCare subsidies they created — and extended — with zero Republican votes. Zero Republicans voted to pass ObamaCare in the first place. Premiums are set to rise 30%, and no one wants to pay the price for the Democrats’ so-called “Affordable” Care Act debacle, but extending big subsidies for people making 400% of the poverty level isn’t exactly a winner.
“He knows damn well what Democrats want,” Schumer said of his counterpart, Thune. “It’s the very same thing that a vast majority of Americans want, including nearly 60% of MAGA voters. We want lower healthcare costs now.”
Healthcare costs will not be lower. The higher costs will simply be transferred to taxpayers. Well, to be more accurate, our future grandchildren will repay the Chinese for the Democrats’ expensive giveaway.
But to his point about MAGA voters, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has indeed become one of the loudest voices calling for more subsidies and for somebody to come up with a plan to really fix ObamaCare.
Greene, Hawley, and other Republicans are certainly getting anxious, which is understandable given that the Leftmedia always blames the GOP for shutdowns. This time, however, the polling shows that people aren’t buying it.
CNN polling guru Harry Enten has been sounding the alarm for well over a week. Yesterday, he rang it again: “We’ve got a situation here where Republicans with the shutdown are actually rallying their base, but it’s also something that’s not hurting them with the folks in the middle. If anything, it’s helping them with folks in the middle.” He added, “The Republican brand has actually gotten better among independents.”
Schumer’s brand? Not so much. The latest left-wing polling shows him with a job approval rating of just 26%.
Heck, even the American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s largest union of federal workers, has begun pressuring Democrats to end their shutdown. What a strange new world.
