The Patriot Post® · The Schumer Shutdown
“I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say, ‘I’m going to shut the government down; I’m going to not pay our bills unless I get my way’?It’s a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) … in 2013. Schumer, then Harry Reid’s lieutenant, also stated ahead of the government shutdown that year, “You know we could do the same thing on immigration. … We could say, ‘We’re shutting down the government. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling until you pass immigration reform.’ It would be governmental chaos.” Well, surprise, surprise — just a few years later, now-Senate Minority Leader Schumer has totally reversed his “convictions” and has embraced the “politics of idiocy,” holding the government hostage over his demands for an immediate deal on the non-imminent DACA issue. As Donald Trump’s director of legislative affairs Marc Short pointed out, “There’s no DACA bill to vote on, and there’s no emergency on the timing.”
Democrats saw to that by leaking and making a spectacle of Trump’s alleged vulgar remarks, all to paint him as a racist and undermine any deal. Now they’ve shut the government down, too.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) pointedly questioned Democrats’ motives for resisting working out a necessary budget deal. “Are Democrats going to shut the government … because we want basic reforms and enforcement measures that are going to prevent further flows of illegal immigrants and unskilled immigrants?” he asked rhetorically. “Seems to me like a tough position to win in light of the 2016 election.”
Furthermore, recall Barack Obama’s words during the 16-day shutdown in 2013, when he smugly lectured, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country’s about. Now, there’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown. But let’s be clear. There are no winners here. These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy.” Oh how times change.
Genevieve Wood of The Heritage Foundation hit the nail on the head, noting that the government shutdown was Democrats’ political objective. She writes, “The reality is [Democrats] don’t really want a deal on immigration. They talk about addressing the needs of the DACA population, but they have no time to address the other side of the immigration issue, border security and enforcement.” Wood continues, “Here’s the deal. Democrats are fearful that President Trump and Republicans could go into the midterm elections with both victories on tax cuts and immigration reform. So at the end of the day, that’s what all of this is about. It’s an election year, and that means politics, not people, are their priority.”
That’s Democrat deceit and duplicity in a nutshell.