WASHINGTON \u2014 Government shutdowns wreak havoc on financial markets, on travelers, on millions of soldiers and other public employees who face the prospect of bills piling up with no paychecks to cover them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why politicians usually try really, really hard to avoid blame<\/a>.<\/p>\n What makes the current game of budgetary chicken unusual is that key players have openly called for a shutdown \u2014 a rump group of ultraconservatives in the House who are using the threat to demand less spending and more border security.<\/p>\n Plenty of Republicans beyond the core holdouts defend the tactics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one lever we have is the power of the purse,\u201d Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, said last week on Fox Business<\/a>. \u201cIf that\u2019s what it takes to shut down the border, at least control the border, then that\u2019s what we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n He shrugged off alarmism about disruptions from a shutdown.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already have chaos,\u201d he said, adding that argument \u201cdoesn\u2019t excite me or my constituents because in our mind, the government has already shut down at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, downplayed a shutdown last weekend on WFAA-TV (Ch. 8)<\/a> as a \u201ctemporary pause in non-essential activities.\u201d<\/p>\n For Democrats, the spin is simple: None of them want a shutdown, whereas lots of Republicans openly entertain that outcome as a negotiating tool. There\u2019s no mystery which voters should hold responsible.<\/p>\n Plenty of Republicans voice exasperation at their colleagues\u2019 brinkmanship, too. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been lobbying the holdouts on grounds a shutdown could cost Republicans the House in the next elections.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we have a government shutdown the Chinese are going to be very happy. That right there for me is reason enough not to do it,\u201d Rep. Jake Ellzey, R-Texas, told constituents last weekend<\/a> in a social media post. \u201cI\u2019m not in favor of a shutdown. \u2026 We need to be funding our government.\u201d<\/p>\n Texas Democrats, in line with the White House and the rest of the party, adamantly oppose a shutdown, blaming Republicans and in particular, Speaker Kevin McCarthy for failing to keep his fractious conference in line.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s because of a group of hardliners who have taken over the House. They are in control,\u201d said Rep. Colin Allred of Texas, one of the Democrats running to take on Sen. Ted Cruz next year. \u201cThey want the suffering. \u2026 There are Democrats like me, who are ready and willing to not get everything we want, to try and meet the speaker halfway.\u201d<\/p>\n Allred took office in January 2019 during the nation\u2019s last and longest shutdown. He delivered food to airport security agents.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of our federal workers are working paycheck to paycheck,\u201d he said last week on MSNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n He and other Texas Democrats chide McCarthy for refusing to cut a deal that cuts out the GOP hardliners, despite the likelihood that would trigger a no-confidence vote that could lead to his ouster.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can solve this quickly\u201d if McCarthy \u201cwould just go outside his Republican caucus and talk to Democrats,\u201d Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told CBS News<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n At a recent oversight hearing on telework at federal agencies, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, took Republicans to task for misplaced concern about lost productivity.<\/p>\n In Congress, she said, \u201cpeople have shown up, but they have not shown up to actually do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n Other Texas Democrats have been scathing.<\/p>\n \u201cRepublicans are deliberately forcing a shutdown because they can\u2019t get their cruel, extremist agenda passed,\u201d Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said last week on X<\/a>, formerly Twitter, adding that McCarthy has caved to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other extremists.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to cause damage\u201d yet try to blame Biden, he said on Instagram<\/a>. \u201cDemocrats are united in the radical idea that we just keep government services operating\u2026 and figure out the budget without a shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans have also pointed fingers.<\/p>\n Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Texas, on Newsmax, accused Biden of wasting weeks during the summer refusing to negotiate. She defended the showdown as a way of \u201cforcing policies\u201d at the border that \u201canybody who wants to live in a safe country is able to actually be proud of us.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Cruz argued on the Senate floor that \u201cPresident Biden and Senator Schumer want a shutdown. I think they believe it benefits them politically.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats would agree with part of the assessment: that Republicans are handing them a political gift.<\/p>\n Cruz was pushing a bill to keep paying the military during a shutdown.<\/p>\n \u201cThe military has to do its job and keep this nation safe. \u2026 Never mind that you can\u2019t pay for groceries for your wife and kid that week. Never mind that you can\u2019t pay your rent,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy? Because partisanship is so rife in this town that the Democrat leadership believed they could hold these young fighting men and women hostage and pay no political price.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Senate voted 77-19 to advance a short-term funding bill crafted by Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.<\/p>\n Cruz opposed it.<\/p>\n Sen. John Cornyn supported it.<\/p>\n With 16 days to go<\/a> before the deadline this weekend, the senior senator was trying to deflect blame onto Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, accusing him of botching the chance to avert a shutdown by slow-walking appropriations bills in the Senate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Majority Leader won\u2019t be able to escape the blame for what will be a \u2018Schumer shutdown,\u2019\u201d Cornyn said.<\/p>\n Cornyn lately has focused on a different argument \u2013 that shutdowns just don\u2019t yield policy victories.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a fan of government shutdowns,\u201d he said in a more recent floor speech, adding that the problems that precipitate showdowns \u201care still there staring in the face when the government reopens. And it creates a lot of collateral damage and a lot of collateral expense. It doesn\u2019t actually save money. It actually costs more money because of the disruption. Shutdowns harm innocent people and create needless uncertainty for our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten days before the Saturday night deadline, a dozen GOP holdouts quashed a proposal from the far right House Freedom Caucus to stave off a shutdown for a month.<\/p>\n That proposed stopgap included an 8% cut from non-defense spending and nearly all of the conservatives\u2019 demands on immigration.<\/p>\n The holdouts wanted more.<\/p>\n Rep. Chip Roy, who helped draft that proposal, seethed at the obstinacy, calling it \u201cstupid\u201d to feed the narrative that Republicans are hellbent on a shutdown.<\/p>\n Not that he\u2019s averse to using one leverage.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only people being held hostage are the American people by Democrat leadership in the Senate and in the White House \u2014 holding them hostage to a wide open border,\u201d he said during a floor debate Tuesday night as House Republicans narrowly teed up four appropriations bills for possible action Friday. (The bills would not avert a shutdown even if they didn\u2019t face opposition in the Senate.)<\/p>\n Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, leading the GOP side of that debate, likewise defended the hardball tactics given the \u201cfall from anarchy into a calamity\u201d at the border. The GOP, he said, is on a \u201ccrucial mission to rectify past errors and steer our nation back on the path of fiscal responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a92023 The Dallas Morning News. Visit dallasnews.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n KeyWords:: 256d7dba-8c2a-4ab0-b6e0-004a04696ef4 WASHINGTON \u2014 Government shutdowns wreak havoc on financial markets, on travelers, on millions of soldiers and other public employees who face the prospect of bills piling up with no paychecks to cover them. That\u2019s why politicians usually try really, really hard to avoid blame. What makes the current game of budgetary chicken unusual is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29256,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29255\/revisions\/29256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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