The government shutdown – hugely damaging in so many ways – is over. The House joined the senate in passing a funding package and President Trump immediately signed it into law.
Republicans have been calling it the Schumer shutdown. The logic is that Schumer, as the Senate Minority Leader, kept exhorting Democrats to vote down every attempt to open the government.
But that doesn’t change the fact that every Democrat could have voted to open government, but virtually every Democrat proactively voted to keep it shut down.
No, it was not the Schumer shutdown. Not when almost every Democrat voted to keep the shutdown going throughout this month -and-a-half period. Not when, even for the 60-40 Senate vote that effectively ended it, almost every Democrat (38 out of 45) voted to keep the government shut down. Not when, even for the 222-209 House vote that ended it, almost every House Democrat (207 of them) voted to keep it going. And not when, now that the vote has taken place, so many Democrats are furious with Schumer for failing to prolong it.
Bottom line: it was the Democrat shutdown. Chuck Schumer was just a political hack who couldn’t control a tiny number of his Democrat counterparts, while all the others marched in lock step to keep the shutdown going.
If Republicans are smart (a major “if”), they will call it what it is – a Democrat shutdown – from today to election day next year.
