Dear Editor:
Friday we went by the NRCS office to see about buying some seed. Of course, it was closed because of the shutdown. This is hardly a crisis, certainly not when compared to the billions of dollars that are being withheld from Medicaid, approved state infrastructure projects, the Department of Energy and even counter-terrorism funding. Meanwhile Trump is looking to provide $10 billion in relief funding to farmers who are being harmed by his tariffs, all while planning another round of mass layoffs of federal workers (like those at NRCS, USDA, Forest Service, etc)! The longest shutdown in U.S. history was a five-week interruption during Trump’s first term, so look no further for who to blame. The Republicans control the Presidency and both houses of Congress. (You could even argue they control the Supreme Court.) They own it: they run the government and could keep it open if they wanted to.
You might say, “But what about the Democrats? Their votes are necessary to pass a short-term budget “band-aid” and they won’t do it! They’re to blame!” The Democrats might vote for a measure that restored drastic cuts to funding for Medicaid, but here are two things to know: 1) Because of the Senate “filibuster” rule, certain measures, like this one, require 60 votes to pass (the Senate Republicans have 53). But it would take only 50 votes to pass a later measure that put the cuts back in! And this Administration has repeatedly shown that it has no intention to honor already approved Congressional funding. So, as analyst Matt Yglesias has pointed out, “Trump is now asking Democrats to provide cross-party votes for appropriations that they can unilaterally backtrack on and not even offering verbal promises to refrain from doing this.” 2) The Republicans can pass any budget measure they choose, whenever they want to re-open the government, without needing ANY Democratic votes. The filibuster is not chiseled in stone and can be dropped at any time with a simple majority of 51 votes, which the Republicans control. They can then pass the budget measure with 51 votes. In fact, less than a month ago, Senate Republicans changed the filibuster rule to allow the confirmation of batches of presidential nominees together, using a simple majority vote. They have done this on multiple occasions for other issues in the past. Don’t be fooled: they could do so now, but prefer not to so that they can blame a shutdown on the Democrats.
I think people are actually smarter than the Republicans give them credit for. On March 12 Trump’s approval rating was 48% approve and 48% disapprove. As of October 4 his rating was 43% approve and 54% disapprove (source: NYT/Siena University). Whatever your political affiliation, don’t be suckered: the Republicans own this one, and all its ill effects. Remember that come the mid-terms.
David Laufer
