Let it Go!

        There has been a fair amount of discussion re: the recent decision to reopen the government (end the partial shutdown). There has also been talk of not gloating” about it and I agree, but not exactly as some have suggested.

         First, let’s discard the “blame the Congress” thread. That’s a red herring. Of course, some will believe, in spite of a mountain of contradictory data, produced by the Government itself, that building a wall at great expense would be the most effective use of our tax dollars to stop drug flow into the US when most, by a large margin, actually comes across check points and even more into ports. Those people will blame the House majority, which since, early January has been Democratic. On an informative note, all bills related to spending must originate in the House. Moreover, both House and Senate must pass the bill in the precise same language before the President can even consider it. I’m frequently surprised by the number of Americans who vote for the people who spend their money without knowing the mechanism by which it is required to be done.

       A veto by the President can only be overridden by a 2/3 majority of both Houses of Congress voting to do so. Now the questions Republicans should be asking themselves, rather than admiring their leader for ending what should never have started in any case, is, “If we now blame Democrats for the shutdown (and some are) why did we not blame the Republican legislators when they actually had held the majority in both houses? Why didn’t the Republican controlled House and Senate simply pass, over whatever objection the Democratic members might have had, a bill to fund “the wall?” He had two years of majority to do it. He had a Republican House, and a simple majority of one vote would have sent the bill to the Senate where he also had a majority. So again, why not just do it?

        I am relatively sure most cannot, or will event try to, make an honest answer to that question. Allow me to offer an opinion as to why this happened now, as it did.

       First, while the House, pre-2018 elections, almost assuredly could have passed such a bill, the Senate was very close to evenly split. Additionally, there was much less enthusiasm for the wall in the Senate and still is. Trump, lives and dies by, “I won, look at me.” If you think that’s wrong, open “The Art of the Deal” (his ghost-written book) to any page. He could, in 2017 or 2018, easily have called speaker Ryan and Senate Majority leader McConnell to the oval office and asked them to send him the bill, but he was well aware that it would probably not pass the Senate because several Republican Senators would vote against it. He was simply unwilling to not get his way with a majority in both houses.

        But with the House now with a Democratic majority, he could avoid all that unpleasantness and embarrassment, so waiting until a continuing budget resolution was due, he called McConnell, (the real villain, along with Trump here) and tells him, (this, by the way is factual, McConnell has said as much) “Don’t send me a continuing resolution bill unless the money for the wall is in it,”  knowing he wasn’t going to see the House pass such a bill anyway because he’d lost the majority. The end game was his belief that as the deadline approached, the House would cave, and send the Senate a bill with wall funding included. After all, the House had offered funding for far more practical and effective measures in almost the same amount (in the high $4 billion plus range.) His fall back was to, if he didn’t get his way, allow a shutdown, for which he and his supporters could than blame the Democrats, and after a while they’d cave in and he’d get his way. Make no mistake, “Get his way” is precisely the way this man-child thinks and has been for decades.

        The other piece of the puzzle, and we saw in in some of the most irresponsible comments ever to come from any administration official, was Trump’s and his advisors’ complete lack of understanding of what common working folks live with every day of their working life – mortgages, utility bills, food costs, etc. He has the disadvantage of never having had to work for a living, and so out of the loop as to guess that “Grocers will just let you get food on credit, or “offer to do odd jobs for the landlord in lieu of rent,” or the obvious fact that many of his inner circle simply had no concept of people actually living paycheck to paycheck. As a data point, a newly hired TSA screener makes about $25k annually. If they’re married with a child, the family is under the federally established poverty level!   He also failed to assess the dangers of not paying the Coast Guard (you know those persons who do more drug interdiction that at the border,? TSA, or maybe most significantly, Air Traffic Controllers.

        So, what happened to change his mind? This we’ll never know, because he’ll never tell us truthfully. However, and this, unlike everything else in this post which is factual, is my opinion; I believe that when La Guardia was forced to suspend flight operations, it dawned on Donald Trump that one group of persons he wasn’t paying, Air Traffic Controllers, could easily crash the economy in a matter of days by walking out and closing all the nation’s airports. With every report showing that he was taking a steadily  increasing amount of blame for the shutdown, Trump, again in his own words, “Told Senator McConnell to send him a bill.” Why is this unusual? First because the Senate majority leader doesn’t take orders from POTUS. Secondly, because he knew the House would readily pass and send such a bill. The Senate (McConnell at Trump’s request) was the stumbling block, all along. McConnell would not even debate or consider a bill without wall funding, even though neither House had the votes to override a veto.

        So, should we pile on Trump or gloat? No, I don’t think so, but not because he did a noble thing. He acted as he always has, in what he felt was his own best interest but which, for once, was also congruent with the Nation’s interest. Any trapped animal, back to the wall, is more dangerous if tormented. As Elsa said, “Let it go.”