A number of years ago, my wife and I were driving through Washington, DC returning from vacation. We stopped at a combination convenience store/gas station operated by an immigrant couple. I stayed outside pumping gas while my wife went inside to get the snacks. I’d been there many times before and knew their cashier’s station was surrounded by bullet-proof glass. What I didn’t know was that on the weekends, their son (who I’d estimate to have been 10-11 years old at the time) helped out at the store when he wasn’t in school. Unfortunately, this fact was apparently also known to someone who wanted to rob the place.
While I was blissfully pumping gas and wondering what was taking my wife so long, an armed robbery was taking place inside. It turned out that the robber had “accidentally” dropped a glass bottle, and the mother (who was in the cashier’s booth, asked her son to clean the mess up. At this point, the robber grabbed the little boy, held a gun to his head, and loudly demanded that my wife and the other customer who was there at the time get on the floor and that the child’s mother open the door to the cashier’s booth or he would blow the child’s brains out. Needless to say, the mother opened the cashier’s booth, and the robber made off with what was in the cash register. My wife was very shaken by the experience, but I’m sure that was nothing compared to the emotions experienced by the little boy and his mother.
What Trump is doing now is very similar to what that armed robber did. He is effectively holding a gun to the head of the United States and demanding that Congress bend to his will and give him exactly what he wants or he’ll pull the trigger. He’s effectively saying that he thinks the Democrats in Congress care more about this country than he does, and so they will give in to his demands, and that he is perfectly willing to pull the trigger if they don’t.
It is important to remember that it is solely CONGRESS that has the authority, under the Constitution, to appropriate money. Many Presidents haven’t gotten all of what they wanted for one project or another — in fact, I’d venture to say that’s been the case with most, if not all, Presidents. But to the best of my knowledge, this is not only the longest shut-down in history, it’s also the first one that’s been caused by the President insisting that if Congress doesn’t give him everything he wants for some pet project, that he will destroy the country.
And make no mistake about it — if this continues much longer, it WILL destroy the country. There are a great many federal employees who have highly critical jobs, but who don’t make a lot of money. We’ve all heard about the TSA agents, but there are also the guards at federal prisons, clerical employees at the FBI, lab assistants at NIH, enlisted personnel in the Coast Guard, and countless others. And even among those with professional jobs, who make more money, unless they’re reasonably far along in their careers, they’re probably living more or less from paycheck to paycheck, paying off student loans and mortgages on houses they recently bought, etc.
If this shutdown continues much longer, these folks won’t just be calling in sick, they’ll be quitting to take other jobs that will actually enable them to pay their bills. There’s this minor inconvenience (at least to Trump and his ilk) called the 13th Amendment that prevents him from requiring these folks to engage in slavery or involuntary servitude.
Democrats can’t back down to this hostage-taking, because if they do, Trump will repeatedly use the same tactics to give him whatever powers he wants, threatening to destroy the country if the Democrats don’t bend to his will as what will effectively be an absolute dictator.
The only way out of this mess that I can see is for Mitch McConnell to bring the House-passed bills to the floor of the Senate, and to tell Trump that if he vetoes them, the Senate is ready to join the House in overriding his veto — and that the United States Congress is a co-equal branch of government, not Donald Trump’s lackey. Failing that, the only way out is for Senate Republicans to firmly inform McConnell that they are finished with being Trump’s co-conspirators in this hostage-taking, and that they will remove McConnell as Senate Majority Leader if that’s what they need to do to demonstrate that their loyalty is to country above loyalty to a would-be absolute dictator.