Government Shutdown 2018: Which Party Owns This Mess?

by Debbie Shipman

Republicans own all three branches of government: the Executive Branch, the Legislative (both houses of the Congress) and a majority of seats on the Judicial Branch. If republicans can't write a bill that draws at least enough democrats onto their side, that's on them. If republicans want a budget, they can pass one. A clean one that isn't tied to a border wall or any other issue that the parties are far apart on. The truth is that government works well only on consensus, and there are many issues upon which a majority of both parties can agree. Our federal government has been barely functional for years.

If Republicans want an immigration bill, they have the power to pass one. In fact, a bipartisan group has been working on a bill to deal with the DACA issue, but Republican leadership refuses to let it move forward. (Schoolhouse Rock refresher here.) Republicans want the immigration issue as ammunition in the budget fight, and a clean bipartisan bill that was negotiated between members of both parties would ruin that bargaining chip. Neither party usually wants clean bills that deal with one specific issue; they want to leverage other issues like immigration. Unfortunately, there is often little incentive to compromise since even government shutdowns offer politicians a great way to polarize their constituents. Differences of opinion get votes; if we all tried to love our brother and imagine ourselves walking in his shoes, we'd have little to fight—or bother to vote—about. 

Most Americans want, in general, the same things. In fact, most human beings want the same things. We want access and opportunity to make for ourselves the best life we are capable of earning. We don't want other people or governments throwing obstacles in our way. We want at least the same opportunity as anyone else to feed our families, provide them shelter, do meaningful work and get enough rest. We want to know that the people we love are safe. We can't always agree on the policies that get us there, but our wants and needs are mostly the same. But then there are, of course, selfish people who don't care about anyone else as long as they get their piece of the pie, and worse, there are a small percentage of people who want what others have even if it means another human being dies or goes hungry. Not all politicians are that way, but the profession seems to attract more than it's share of people obsessed with power at most any cost. Wars are orchestrated by people in power to take from people who have less power. It's the rest of us humans just trying to muddle through and make the best of this thing called "life" who pay the price and sometimes lose our humanity in the process.

President Lyndon Johnson said it best, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Politicians and money-changers for whom power takes precedence over people pit neighbor against neighbor so that they don't have to use force to take from us what they want for themselves. They simply work to convince the rest of us fallible human beings that other people—brown people, hungry people, refugees fleeing war zones, transgender people, vagina hat-wearing activists—are taking what belongs to us. If we all understood that most people are more like us than they are different, We the People would be much harder to control. 

Instead of taking action to solve the problem of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, Congress wants to use DACA recipients as pawns.  Only those "Dreamers" who've earned a high school diploma or GED and kept their noses clean with no felonies or serious misdemeanors are eligible for deferred action on deportation. People in power want to remain in power, and so they want you to believe that DACA is about drug cartels and human traffickers and gang bangers, people here to take your job instead of people who grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag and serving in the U.S military. They don't want you to know that Dreamers are given work permits and pay taxes on their earnings. They don't won't you to walk a mile in the shoes of someone who faces deportation to a country where they haven't set foot since they were a child, a country with people and places they may not even remember. A place their parents left because they had few opportunities or faced hunger and poverty, or frequent explosions. You would like to say you'd do whatever it took to provide for your own family, even if it meant crossing man-made borders. Can you not at least try to imagine how a child whose parents may have risked everything to keep them safe would feel facing deportation to a country they don't know?

Congress hasn't passed major immigration reform since the 1980's when, under Reagan, they granted amnesty to illegal aliens. That's because Democrats and Republicans both are always thinking about and raising money for their next elections. They want to talk about immigration because it riles up their base. For decades now, that has been a valuable tool useful for getting out the vote. They have had no incentive to fix immigration because it would mean that they have to find another hot button issue to rile up the base.

It's as simple as that, and both parties are the just as guilty. This January 2018 government shut down though? That is 100% on the Republicans. They can put veterans and other Americans first in these budget talks anytime they want to do it. To do that they will just have to find another issue to polarize the public on. And they will, because staying in office is more important than actually governing.

Debbie has a BA in English/Technical Writing and an MA in Political Science. She enjoys writing on public policy, criminal justice, cannabis prohibition and whatever else pops into her head.