Shutdown Round Two
If the Senate fails to approve the package of spending bills sent to it late Thursday by the House, then the federal government will begin another partial shutdown late Friday night.
The developments in Minneapolis over the weekend at this point guarantee a shutdown will happen. One of the spending provisions is tied to Homeland Security and ICE, and Democrats are pledging to shut the government down rather than approve spending that includes DHS and ICE.
They wanted something to grab onto to hold up the spending bills yet again, and Saturday morning’s shooting gave them that—regardless of how merited the agents’ actions may have been.
A pox on all their houses, however. When the government was reopened after Shutdown Round One of this budget cycle, a January 30 deadline was set. But when you look at the session schedule, this was doomed to fail regardless of any ICE-involved shooting.
The House worked three days last week—off for Monday’s federal holiday, then out early to avoid the winter storm and get members home because the House is not in session all this week. The spending deadline is Friday…and the House is out of town.
Not like the Senate is any better. They took all of last week off, only to then miss today as well due to the winter storm. That means four days to vote up-or-down on the House spending bills, which were lumped into a single package as opposed to individual bills.
The House could be called back early, but you get the idea—it’s all a dereliction of duty and failure to take their jobs seriously.
And all that is without noting the hideous levels of wasteful spending that is in the House bills, for items members pledged long ago they’d get rid of.
I’d say we deserve better, but we keep voting for these folks…so in that respect, we get what we deserve…and wind up with voting for the lesser of two evils at the polling place.
Congress as a whole cannot be taken seriously. Their actions—or inactions—show us that.
