Since Donald J. Trump has apparently ceded his powers to his chief of staff John Kelly (aka #PresidentKelly — make it trend on Twitter) and troglodyte advisor Stephen Miller, and the Dems are unmovable, we have found ourselves once again facing a government shutdown.
As much as I want to see the Dreamers get their due, I think this is a bad tactic. For one, Dems should be better than the GOP, who have pulled this stunt before and become serial abusers of the filibuster. I know the argument that Dems need to be just as tough as the Republicans — agree wholeheartedly — but there are better ways to do it than by a shutdown. There are all sorts of way they can throw monkey wrenches into the works, and they should go at it.
But beyond the political/tactical arguments, there is a more important human reason I feel this way — the shutdown affects millions of Federal workers in ways big and small, and many millions who rely on the Federal Government for services in one way or another.
I’m not talking about being denied access to a national park (Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon were both closed when I tried to visit on my honeymoon during the first Clinton shutdown). I mean people who depend on medical or other social services, and Federal employees who depend on their salaries, just like everyone else.
To illustrate: I was serving at an embassy in Europe during the second Clinton shutdown in 1996. My position happened to be deemed “essential,” so I faced no consequences (other than the enormous backlog of visa and other “nonessential” service requests that built up during the shutdown). My salary didn’t stop.
A young junior officer at the post, Ben, on the other hand, was deemed nonessential, so his salary stopped cold. Unlike me, Ben was young and had no savings. He had a wife and baby to support. He had to borrow money from me to get by. I know he was abashed and humiliated having to ask me to help him out.
Multiply his situation by tens or hundreds of thousands of times. That is why I can’t support this shutdown, even if it, unlike GOP-driven shutdowns of the past, is being done for all the right reasons. (And, yes, I understand the human costs of not doing anything about the Dreamers soon.) It’s awful that governing in the US has come to this brinksmanship.
Here’s hoping it’s over soon. But with Trump having changed his mind innumerable times over the past few days and turning over his presidency to hardliners, I fear it won’t, and a lot of folks like Ben will suffer damage in the meantime.