Can We All Agree That Everyone Involved in This Government Shutdown Is a Hypocrite?

Joseph A. WulfsohnJan 20th, 2018, 11:50 am
 

Well, it wasn’t entirely shocking that our elected officials in Congress failed to pass funding. And while the finger pointing in this blame game is in all directions, it’s the American people that ultimately lose.

However, despite all the differences they have, Republicans, Democrats, and President Trump have one thing in common: they’re a bunch of hypocrites.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor last night with indignation towards his Democratic colleagues for something his own party was guilty of in 2013. Back then, the GOP was in the minority as Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. And theirs efforts (most notably by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz) to include the defunding of Obamacare, something President Obama would have never signed anyway, was incorporated into the spending bill and it derailed into a political dumpster fire.  And the GOP was rightfully blamed.

Now, the tables have turned. It’s the Democrats who are currently in the minority as Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. And their efforts to include DACA, which is policy that has absolutely nothing to do with the budget, is what prevented the spending bill from passing. However, Democrats come off as the more egregious hypocrites because it’s easy for Republicans to commit a wrongdoing before and not do it again versus the Democrats who slammed Republicans for committing that wrongdoing — and now they’re doing the exact same thing.

All you have to do is listen to what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer had to say about the 2013 government shutdown. Pelosi labeled Republicans “legislative arsonists” and called it an “unthinkable tactic” to use a government shutdown for a political debate. Schumer’s comments look even worse in hindsight:

“You know, we can do the same thing on immigration. We believe strongly in immigration. We could say, ‘We’re shutting down government. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling until you pass immigration reform.’ It would be governmental chaos!”

It would be governmental chaos, Chuck.

Anyone who isn’t a blind partisan can acknowledge that Republicans were to blame for the 2013 government shutdown and the Democrats are to blame for this shutdown. Even if every Republican voted in favor of the CR, it still required the help of Democrats because of the 60 Senate votes that were needed due to the filibuster, which is exactly why the “Republicans control everything” talking point is completely hollow. And it’s hard for Democrats to claim they had objections to anything in the GOP spending bill, especially since it included a six-year extension of CHIP, but their obsession to rush DACA, which doesn’t even expire until March 5, was simply virtue signaling with bad optics.

Republicans are now portraying them as putting illegal immigrants above American citizens — specifically, the 9 million children who rely on CHIP. And between polling that showed the majority of Americans would rather avoid a government shutdown than have DACA renewed and the headlines from Bloomberg, The Associated Press, and even briefly The New York Times placing blame for this shutdown on Democrats, it’s looking like their latest performance of political theater will backfire.

And yes, President Trump is also a hypocrite.

You gotta give the Democrats some credit for digging up these gold nuggets of Trump placing government shutdown blame on then-President Obama. Even before the 2013 shutdown, Trump said it would be a “tremendously negative mark on the president” if he faced one, noting he “has to bring everyone together.” And he told Fox & Friends that “no one would remember” who’s running the House or the Senate during the time of a shutdown and that the “pressure is on the president.”

Of course, there’s a tweet for every occasion in Trump’s archives. And in this case, there are several.

We all know this president isn’t going to take responsibility for anything.

So while our incompetent Congress is stuck in gridlock, let’s all remember that they deserve a bipartisan mockery from time to time. And let’s hope they can act like adults soon and maybe, just maybe, they’ll actually do their jobs.

 

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

Tags: