For a brief moment, it looked like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had averted a shutdown.
Over the weekend, a deal was announced that made it appear as though the government would remain operational, even with Dems at odds with the administration over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kristi Noem.
House Democrats, however, have something else in mind, and with the slim GOP majority, if they can get just a handful of Republicans to vote with them, the deal will be blocked.
The latest spending bill has been a problem from the outset simply because everyone took too long to address it.
The House passed a bill several weeks ago, but with the Senate not taking it up immediately, the shooting in Minnesota put it at risk. Now, the Senate is working on a new spending bill, so it will have to go back to the House before being approved and sent to Trump’s desk.
To that point, Schumer suggested breaking off all other spending bills that would be passed on their own, and a separate DHS bill to extend funding as is for two weeks.
Congress could then fight it out over the next two weeks on how they wanted to go about funding DHS in the future, which would avoid a shutdown for the time being.
The current funding bill expired on Saturday, and House Minority Leader Jeffries (D-NY) was in no hurry to pass the Senate-approved bills over the weekend.
This meant that there would be a short government shutdown, but it should only last a few days.
Jeffries stated, “We need ICE and DHS agencies to conduct themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country. … If we’re contemplating a two-week freeze in order to get us to a place where we can see dramatic change, we want to understand that there’s an ironclad path forward to get those things done.”
This is yet another stunt by Jeffries to make a splash, as he continues to play games to try to put Democrats in the strongest possible position to win the House back during the midterm election cycle. At this point, he is trying to make every piece of legislation look like a win for Democrats, and that he forced the administration and Republicans to cave to his demands.
As the weekend progressed, Jeffries sounded like he may push for the shutdown to be longer, saying he was going to block the fast-tracking of the legislation.
What Jeffries is touting as being strong and standing up to Trump, the GOP is portraying as a split within the Democrats' chambers, with one Republican stating, "Democrat division creates another government shutdown.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) added, "We can't trust the minority leader to be able to get his members to do the right thing. That's the issue.”
Emmer hit the nail on the head here, in my opinion. This is no longer about We the People, but everything about Democrats regaining power. To me, it seems like every move Jeffries is making has nothing to do with his constituents and everything to do with scoring political points. It once again proves just how broken and corrupt our political system has become.
