Shithole Shutdown Edition
The federal government has shut down. This week, I try to help you make sense of it -- plus some other stuff.
THE BASICS: On Friday at midnight, the government’s funding ran out, forcing a shutdown. This is because Republicans wanted to pass a continuing resolution (“CR”) to keep funding levels at their current levels, but did not want to pass any protection for the Dreamers (despite multiple promises to do so), and Democrats decided not to support another CR without protection for the Dreamers and full funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Although bipartisan majorities supported a compromise plan that would have protected the Dreamers and even provided Republicans with additional border security funding, the Republican leadership refused to bring that to a vote after the White House rejected it. Without a compromise, the Democrats refused to vote for the CR, and the government ran out of funding.
WHY WERE WE AT THE BRINK TO BEGIN WITH?: This crisis was precipated by the fact that the Republican congress has failed to pass a budget for 2018, despite the fiscal year beginning more than four months ago, on October 1. Although the House has passed an omnibus spending bill, it has not even been taken up in the Senate, which was focused on cutting taxes for rich people. So in early September, after the devastating hurricanes that hit Texas and Puerto Rico, Congress passed a CR (plus hurricane relief) to get them through December 8, with the idea being that now they’d have three more months to work out the larger 2018 spending. As he bypassed the far-right of his party to sign the CR, Trump also announced that he wanted to work with Democrats to fix DACA long-term (only a day after ending the program unilaterally). But then three months passed with the GOP focused solely on tax cuts, and so Congress passed yet another two-week CR on December 7. You guys won’t believe this, but they had still made no progress two weeks later. Just days before Christmas, Congress passed yet another short-term CR, with funding set to expire January 19.
WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING OVER?: At bottom, the Democrats are demanding protection for the Dreamers and long-term funding for CHIP, two things that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Trump himself have all not only said they support but have promised to deal with. (That is why this shutdown is nothing like the 2013 shutdown, when Republicans shut down the government, under Ted Cruz’s leadership, over defunding Obamacare -- when Obama was president.) Here’s a helpful timeline from our friends at Pod Save America (with some additions):
9/5/17: Trump rescinds DACA but demands that Congress find a fix to protect the Dreamers.
10/1/17: The GOP let CHIP funding expire, later claiming there wasn’t enough money for a program that saves the government $6 billion over a decade. Meanwhile, they passed a $1.2 trillion tax cut paid for by unicorn’s wings and wishes.
10/24/17: Paul Ryan says he wants a long-term spending bill that protects the Dreamers
12/21/17: As he passes another short-term CR to mid-January, McConnell promises a vote to protect the Dreamers if the Senate comes up with a bipartisan deal: “If negotiators reach an agreement on these matters by the end of January, I will bring it to the Senate floor for a free-standing vote.”
1/9/18: Trump holds a televised meeting and manages not to drool on himself or scream “pussy” at a senator, and so the whole thing is declared a major success. At the meeting, Trump says that he’ll “take the heat” for a bipartisan deal on immigration that protects the Dreamers, and promises to sign any bipartisan bill that passes Congress.
1/11/18: Durbin and Graham present a bipartisan deal that can pass Congress, that protects the Dreamers along with providing additional border security funding (despite literally two years of campaigning that “Mexico” would pay for the wall), eliminating the visa lottery, and slashing other legal immigration. Trump rejects the plan -- saying he doesn’t want immigrants from “shithole” countries but instead wants them from white countries. No other reason is offered for rejecting the plan that, 48 hours earlier, he had said he would support.
1/19/18: Republican leaders in the House and Senate refuse to bring the bipartisan plan to the floor for a vote (breaking their earlier explicit promises).
So to summarize: The President says he wants a deal. McConnell promises to allow a vote on a deal. Ryan says he wants to protect Dreamers. And yet a deal that does all the things Republicans have demanded -- including money they can claim is for a “wall”! -- is rejected, with only Trump’s racism offered as a reason.
P.S. For an extra dose of rage, watch this exchange from January 2017 between Paul Ryan and a Dreamer: “If you’re worried about some deportation force coming knocking on your door this year, don’t worry about that.” What a terrible, terrible human.
P.S.S. For a much more entertaining explanation of how we got here and what we’re fighting over, watch Jon Lovett summarize the situation in under 3 minutes.
SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?: This one I am less equipped to answer. On Friday, Democrats tried passing a 4-day extension to give everyone time to negotiate, but McConnell blocked it. McConnell also blocked Claire McCaskill’s attempt to ensure military spending during the shutdown. It appears the White House and the GOP believe shutdown politics are good for them. Democrats need to break through the noise here. The problem is that while Trump himself has signaled willingness to compromise, his staff (ie, John Kelly and Stephen Miller) have then reneged on deals he has discussed. On Friday night, Trump and Schumer were close to a deal before John Kelly vetoed it, reportedly after McConnell told him to quash any deal Trump made. After Trump had rejected the Durbin-Graham proposal last week, they asked for a counteroffer but received no response, making it almost impossible to negotiate. At bottom, Trump and the Republicans are being wilfully obtuse about what policy outcomes they actually want. If they want to deport the Dreamers, they need to say so, and be held accountable. If they want to protect them, then they should protect them. I am flabbergasted every day by these people’s bottomless bad faith.
OTHER INSANE THINGS THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK: First, in the coda to Shithole-gate, DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and testified that she did not remember whether Trump referred to countries with non-white populations as shitholes -- though she admitted that Trump praised Norway. When Leahey asked her if Norway was a predominantly white country, she professed total ignorance: “I actually don’t know that.” These people.
Next up we have the truly abominable story of the Department of Justice putting out a blatantly mendacious report purporting to show that about 75% of convicted terrorists in the U.S. are “foreign-born” immigrants. How did they arrive at this figure? First, they counted every suspect who was extradited to the U.S. for trial as an immigrant. Second, they included only Muslims in their count, excluding Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other far-right extremists. They tried to justify this by saying the report was only about “international” terrorism, but they defined “international terrorism” simply to mean terrorism by Muslims, as a former FBI official explained: “If you’re a Neo-Nazi terrorist in the United States, even if you’re Canadian or French, you’re a domestic terrorist.” Super cool.
Finally, we have a couple of stories from the Department of Insane Trump Administration Personnel. First up is Carl Higbie, who resigned Thursday as chief of external affairs for the federal government's volunteer service organization after CNN reported a number of shockingly racist, sexist, and homophobic statements he had made on his radio show. For example, he said "the black race" had "lax" morals. “He added that black women think ‘breeding is a form of government employment.’” Speaking of Muslims, he said: “Go back to your Muslim shithole and go crap in your hands and bang little boys on Thursday nights. . . . I just don't like Muslim people. . . . Well people are like, 'well, you can't hate somebody just for being Muslim. It's like, yeah, I can. Do you hate people who rape little boys?” He said that soldiers with PTSD had “a weak mind.” He said the government should invite gun owners to the border to shoot those crossing illegally. He called Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein “bitches.” He said, “You know, I don't like gay people. I just don't." He called Obama “the Muslim who was born in Kenya.” And he said anyone that takes any form of government assistance should not be allowed to vote. So, yeah, he was a real winner -- and a real perfect choice to run the department that oversees federal volunteer programs. Great work, Trump administration!
Last is Taylor Weyeneth, a 24-year-old former campaign aide turned political appointee who had been the de facto head of the national office of drug policy until the Washington Post brought this embarrassment to light. It appears that he is not only blatantly unqualified for the post, but that he doctored his resumes along the way -- which I guess makes sense if “volunteering at a monastery” is one of the few bullet points under your “Experience” header: “In the first résumé, Weyeneth said he volunteered for more than 275 hours at the monastery between 2012 and 2016. The second résumé he submitted to the government said it was more than 150 hours. The résumé provided by the White House does not mention volunteer work at the monastery.” Today, the Post reports that, during his incredibly short working life, Weyeneth was fired from a law firm for failing to show up for work. “In a résumé initially submitted to the government, Weyeneth said he worked at the firm until April 2016. When an FBI official called as part of a background check in January 2017, the firm said Weyeneth had left eight months earlier than the résumé indicated.” He remains the deputy chief of staff. Oh well -- it’s not like we have any sort of drug crisis on our hands at all, right?
OH ALSO THE PRESIDENT HAD AN AFFAIR WITH A PORN STAR: On Earth 2, where Things Still Matter, the news that Trump had (i) an affair (ii) with a porn star (iii) after giving his wife Melania “one week” to lose the baby weight after she gave birth to their son, and that (iv) he told the porn star that she was “just like” his daughter, and that (v) they had unprotected sex, and that, to keep all this quiet, (vi) his personal lawyer set up a dummy corporation to pay $130,000 to said sex worker in the weeks before the presidential election would be, well, news. Which is more than it is on Earth 2, where Nothing Matters.
Endorsements:
- Jonathan Chait wants us all to wake up to the fact that Republicans won’t lift a finger if Trump quashes the Mueller investigation.
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