Is the President the one responsible for this shutdown?
The United States federal government shut down at midnight on January 20. That is not news you usually want to wake up to on a Saturday morning. Exactly one year after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the United States did not have a functional government due to a disagreement about funding.
A bill was approved Monday afternoon to fund the government for the next three weeks, but this is only a temporary solution. So how did we even get here in the first place?
When the clock struck midnight on Friday and the government officially shut down, naturally a lot of finger pointing ensued.
As he does, President Trump quickly took to Twitter about the issue.
Democrats have shut down our government in the interests of their far left base. They don’t want to do it but are powerless!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2018
Democrats and Republicans have been head to head for quite some time now about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was repealed by the Trump administration in 2017.
“This time around, immigration is at the center of the impasse,” wrote senior associate editor Russell Berman in his article for The Atlantic.
However, the fault does not lie with the Democrats. Nor does it lie with the Republicans, for that matter. The Democrats stalled the Senate by sending them into a filibuster, a situation that requires 60 votes as opposed to the traditional 51 majority votes. This was done in protest of Republican refusal to act on issues of immigration. Naturally, each side blames the other.
Minutes before midnight, the White House issued a statement that read, in part, “This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators.”
While the democratic filibuster may have been unnecessary and even harmful, this language does not seem to show much maturity or willingness to compromise from the other side of the aisle.
I believe the real issue is lucrative presidential policy desires that are blatantly opposed by both the left and right. The demands of the Trump administration are stubborn and not widely supported.
This government shutdown was the first shutdown since the Obama administration in 2013.
“Democrats in turn blamed Republicans and Trump for a basic failure to govern,” Berman wrote noting that, “this shutdown is the first in history to occur when a single party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House.”
So why does the blame for this shutdown actually lie with President Trump?
In April 2011, on an interview on the “Today Show,” Trump shared his feelings about government shutdowns.
“If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States,” Trump said. “He’s the one that has to get people together.”
I think it makes sense to use our current president’s own ideals. If the government fails to run, doesn’t it reflect on the leader of the country? Historically, Republicans and Democrats can never seem to come to a decision, but these decisions always center around policies coming straight from the oval office.
In November 2017, a Washington Post article shared that Trump may have been hoping for a government shutdown.
“President Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically,” the article said. “He has asked friends about how a shutdown would affect him politically and has told several people he would put the blame on the Democrats.”
There are two sides to every story and two very clear sides to our government at this point. But I think these sides sat in opposition around this filibuster that led to the shutdown thanks to the person who is supposed to be in the middle-the President of the United States.