The partial federal shutdown is now at a month, and we sit, frozen and complacent. President Trump insists on $5.7B for his wall. The Democrats insist that the idea is insane (which is correct) and that, while they’ll compromise on almost any other aspect of border security, they won’t pay a cent for Trump’s wall. Now it’s been a month and counting, and Republicans dug on over the nonsense.
And, despite all the harm, I’m still saying that Democrats can’t afford to buckle.
Hannibal suggested that Trump’s wall is like Reagan’s Star Wars: it won’t work, but it won’t break us as a nation. Not that $6 billion is trivial, but the shutdown already cost us more than that. The Washington Post has suggested similar conclusions. There is some honor in compromise. As galling as that feels, it would be good to protect DACA people, even temporarily, and get all those federal people and their contractors paid. I acknowledge the argument.
As an aside, we don’t talk about federal contractors much. That’s a significant oversight. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but where I worked, federal contractors outnumbered actual federal employees by an order of magnitude. Many more than people understand. And they’re all out of work, too. Much worse, though, while the federal workers usually get back pay eventually, the feds almost never pay back contractors. Sometimes we got money, but usually not.
Imagine not getting paid for a month. I’m not talking about a delayed paycheck; I’m saying “Never.” Can you do without that much money? Your family? I couldn’t, especially not when we were young. A lot of public servants are looking at financial ruin if that doesn’t change.
So, the plus side of caving to Republican nonsense is that the immediate pain ends. The minus side is that we’re buying off blackmailers. It’s the Republicans who created the harm Trump is suggested he might mitigate, temporarily and maybe not always. It was the racist Republicans who made the dreamers lives hell, broke our laws, pulled children from their parents, and lied to us about it all under oath.
You don’t get to pretend that the pain was an accident. The Trump administration created the child separation policy because it hurts people. That wasn’t a side effect; it was a stated goal. They’re hurting people left and right, and are visibly upset because we don’t allow them to do worse. They trash any policy or protections that limited what big corporations could do to us and make new rules that give the rich and powerful more control over us. Citizens United was the realization of a lofty Republican dream.
Back to the shutdown. Mitch McConnell, of course, could end this disaster with no more than a vague gesture. He already has the bills on his desk that are identical to what the last Senate passed easily. But McConnell won’t act. He hides so nobody can confront him. Few of us are even surprised. When the Republican Party graduated from intimidation and voter suppression to massive corruption supported by open election rigging and illegal aid from a foreign adversary, that showed us the truth. Republicans as a party are willing to burn anything that stands in their way. Short of open rebellion, it doesn’t get worse than what they’ve already done.
As John Kerry suggested, Trump might have staged a hostile takeover of the Freedom Caucus, but he didn’t change its direction. We’re looking at the Republican party goals back to Nixon, just done with much less skill. There is no surprise at where we ended up.
The shutdown is only the beginning. If Democrats cave on Trump’s wall now, what do you think will happen when the debt ceiling vote comes up in a few months? As horrible as the shutdown is, America defaulting on our debts would be much, much worse. And Trump won’t care, because he doesn’t value anything that he doesn’t own. Think about NATO. Trump was willing to crush decades of past American progress and create new decades of international instability on a whim because he’s bored. I guarantee Trump’s advisors are already looking at that upcoming debt vote and deciding what they’ll demand next.
Compromise on almost anything except blackmail. And pretending it’s not a rot on the body politic only lets it fester.
