Capitol ‘deal’ leaves most problems intact

Published 10:30 am Monday, January 28, 2019

 

Resumption of work for the federal government — a deal was struck Friday — will leave thoughtful Americans wondering exactly what that partial shutdown was all about.

President Trump was expected to sign into law legislation passed by voice vote in the Senate and unanimously in the House of Representatives that will put federal employees back to work for three weeks.

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There’s no guarantee what will happen after that. If Trump and the Republicans want progress toward building a border wall, they did not get it in this bill. There is no $5.7 billion for a wall. No nothing.

If Democrats wanted guarantees that government will go on unabated, they did not get that either. They got three weeks and were crowing about it Friday. If the partial shutdown resumes in three weeks, as the president suggested it might, no one won anything for what appeared to be more than a month of across-the-aisle political temper tantrums.

It’s clear, though, that the majesty of the executive branch won the president nothing over the last one month and three days of shutdown. Although Republicans call it a “Pelosi shutdown” or a “Schumer shutdown,” most Americans appear to agree in characterizing it as a Trump shutdown. And polls suggest most blame him for the continuing impasse.

It’s hard to spin a win out of this for anyone — it certainly was not a win for the American people — but it’s not hard to call it a loss for the president. He wanted $5.7 billion and got nothing. Period. Even columnist Ann Coulter lampooned the president while once again dissing former President George H.B. Bush, only recently buried:

“Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States,” she wrote on Twitter, apparently discounting the senior Bush’s record of brave military service and his bold, global leadership during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

(Biggest wimp EVER? Has she never heard of James Buchanan?)

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an issued statement Friday that he fought on behalf of the Coast Guard, the TSA, air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents, ICE agents, FBI agents and others in law enforcement for their paychecks. Maybe. None of that happened until the Republicans “caved,” as Coulter put it.

“The media will obsess over the short-term political fight,” Cruz said, glibly shifting the focus, in that he can’t shift the responsibility. “But what matters is enacting real solutions to the real problems of this country.”

Does anyone believe that Cruz or the rest of the Washington crowd enacted any real solutions this week or for the past month-plus?

At least the Coast Guard will get paid.