President Donald Trump often
boasts he's presiding over a record breaking presidency.
Now he's got another historic
notch on his belt, the longest-ever government shutdown — an impasse that marks
a new low for Washington dysfunction.
The dispute triggered by Trump's
demands for billions of dollars to finally make good on an unfulfilled campaign
promise — to build a border wall — began so long ago that Republicans had a
monopoly on Washington power. The Democratic takeover of the House has deepened
the disconnect, and with neither side willing to fold, nearly 22 days in, there
is still no end in sight.
Since Trump crowed he would be "proud" to
shutter the government over the wall, he gets to shoulder much
of the blame for a crisis that is the inevitable result when the nation's
political polarization is institutionalized in Washington.
The last three weeks have exposed
the lack of empathy of a billionaire President who shrugs off the struggles of
federal workers who work paycheck to paycheck. Trump is clearly more concerned
about a pet political project than his constitutional role of providing
governance to all Americans.
But he is not alone in his
dereliction of duty. The Republican-led Senate is doing nothing to offer its
President a face saving way out. And while House Democrats are going through
the motions of passing bills to reopen government, they don't seem to be doing
much else to break the logjam. Before Trump was President, party leaders had
seemed at least open to funding a barrier on the border as part of wider
immigration legislation.
Trump urged party leaders Friday
to return to Washington and vote for a wall, a barrier or whatever they want to
call it -- even "peaches."
"This is where I ask the
Democrats to come back to Washington and to vote for money for the wall, the
barrier, whatever you want to call it, it's OK with me," the President
said during a White House roundtable on immigration.
"They can name it whatever.
They can name it 'peaches.' I don't care what they name it. But we need money
for that barrier," he added.
The stalemate represents a
crucial first fight between Trump and his Democratic enemies in Washington's
new era of divided government.
But every battle has victims. And
right now it's 800,000 government workers who feel insulted, forgotten and
anxious about rent, mortgage, car payment and medical bills piling up.
While they fret, nothing is
happening in Washington this weekend. In fact, members of Congress, who are
getting paid, are off until Monday.
They might notice as they fly
home that the nation's transportation system is under strain. Many of those TSA
agents who keep travelers safe are working without pay. An airport in Tampa is
opening a food bank for employees. And some food inspections are on hold with
government shut down.
"I would beg both Houses of
Congress, I would beg the American people to please look around and understand
that federal workers, we have a face — we have families," Jacqueline
Maloney, a federal worker whose paycheck didn't arrive on Friday, told CNN's
Brooke Baldwin in an emotional interview.
"We might be a neighbor,
your best friend, your best friend's mom, your aunt, your cousin. We are
everywhere."
Government shutdowns usually end
when the political leaders caught in the standoff calculate that the political
damage sustained by standing firm begins to outweigh the embarrassment of a
climbdown.
With tales of anger and
deprivation of government workers stuck in a terrible situation beyond their control
now dominating news coverage, that point may be coming closer.
Neither side however is showing
any sign of cracking yet.
It's on Trump
But for Trump, there would have
been no shutdown. The President, apparently fearing a backlash in conservative
media, refused to keep the government open before Christmas unless he got wall
funding.
In the last week, Trump has tried
a variety of political stunts to try to shift the blame. He gave an Oval Office
address. He stormed out of talks with
Democratic leaders. He flew Air Force One to the border to paint an
inaccurate picture of hordes of criminals and killers pouring into the country.
"The only way you will stop
it is with a very powerful wall or steel barrier," Trump said at the White
House on Friday.
Now, as he seeks taxpayer cash to
build a wall that he promised Mexico would pay for, the President is offering
the fact-bending claims that America's neighbor has already settled up -- in a
yet to be ratified new trade deal.
By any conventional measure,
Trump is guilty of putting his own political ego above the interests of the
Americans he leads. For all the power of his campaign trail rhetoric among
supporters, he's not shifted the political needle at all. He seems oblivious
that in divided government, a President can't just demand what he wants.
Trump's supporters argue that
there is a genuine crisis on the border and brand as "fake news" any
argument that a wall along the frontier with Mexico may not be the best way to
tackle drug trafficking and ballooning asylum claims.
In fact, the wall has become such
an emotional center of Trump's relationship with his political base — and such
a symbol of antipathy towards the President for those who oppose him — that
it's become an insoluble issue.
And government workers are paying
the price.
"The bottom line is there is
no excuse for the political stunt just because the President had made a
commitment when he ran for office and afterwards," said Michael Bloomberg,
the former New York mayor, in a CNN interview.
"He cannot get it done and
deliver for his constituency. He should just stand up and say I tried and let's
get on with the next thing," said Bloomberg, a possible 2020 Democratic
presidential candidate. "There's no one issue or one constituency. The
President has not been elected to be the representative of a party, or of a
small group, he's supposed to be representative of a whole country."
So far, Trump has held off on his
threat to declare a national emergency and reprogram Pentagon funds — possibly
from disaster relief projects in Puerto Rico and Texas — to finance his wall.
Such a step might allow him to
declare a victory that most people will believe to be hollow. He might be able
to sell his supporters on a battle in the courts after an almost certain legal
challenge and reap political capital.
But it would also represent a
fundamental flouting of constitutional governance, since a future president,
thwarted by Congress fulfilling its core task of deciding how taxpayer money is
spent, could choose to go ahead with a favorite political project regardless.
Hypocrisy
The failure of Congress to unpick
the deadlock has disgusted some of its most venerable members.
"How can we resolve this? We
owe it to the American people. This is like a circus," Republican Sen.
Richard Shelby of Alabama said earlier in the week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, who once boasted that "I'm the guy that gets us out
of shutdowns," has been a ghostly presence.
McConnell has refused to act on
Democratic House bills to open various government agencies, since Trump will
not agree to sign them.
For now, McConnell has no desire
to open cracks in the Republican coalition by breaking with a President who has
leveraged his devoted base to punish any dissidents in his party.
There could come a time, however,
when clear discomfort among some GOP members, like Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner,
Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Maine's Sen. Susan Collins, begins to make
life uncomfortable for McConnell.
The bitterness of shutdown
politics has also revealed a seam of hypocrisy that festers on both sides of
the aisle in this fractured political age.
In 2016, Republican Sen. Lindsey
Graham signed on to an amicus brief
in a Supreme Court case challengingPresident Barack Obama's use of
executive power to shield recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program from deportation.
The document complained that
Obama's move was an attempt to supplant Congress' power and a threat to the
constitutional principle of separation of powers. Those norms seem less
important to the South Carolinian now Trump is in the White House.
"Mr. President, Declare a national
emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW," Graham tweeted on Friday after meeting
Trump.
Part of Graham's frustration
stems from his belief that Democrats are hypocrites for refusing to contemplate
immigration enforcement policies that they have favored in the past.
Early last year, Democrats and
the White House appeared close to a deal that would have givenTrump $25 billion in border
security in return for a path to citizenship for DACA
recipients — undocumented migrants brought to the US illegally as children.
Trump eventually pulled out of
the deal.
The idea of border fencing, or a
wall in some areas, has not been so radioactive for Democrats in the past.
In 2006, Democrats including
now-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama voted to authorize a secure fence along about 700
miles of the US-Mexico border.
The project was far from the
concrete or steel wall envisioned by Trump.
But given the symbolic potency of
the idea of a wall, it's not clear Democrats — who do not want their first act
in the majority in the House to be a concession to Trump, would contemplate any
such plan today.
"A wall is an immorality," House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week.
CNN's Liz Stark contributed to
this report.
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