Monday, January 22, 2018

EXTRA: Shutdown ends, GOP at fault

The shutdown of the federal government came to an end Monday with both chambers of Congress passing an interim spending deal, with Republicans promising they will give serious discussion to the immigration issue in the near future.

It was the tying together of those two issues that caused the inability of federal officials to move forward.

NOW AS TO whether those future discussions will amount to anything remains to be seen. Nobody has pledged to change their stance, and it’s very possible the hard-core ideologues will remain solidly behind policies that will eventually result in increases in the number of deportations.

But the sight of the U.S. government doing nothing will come to an end, and there’s less chance of lingering harm being caused by the partisan politicking.

As for who gets the blame for the partisan nonsense that’s already occurred, I found a quickie poll conducted by Morning Consult for Politico to be interesting.

Technically, more people blamed Democrats than any other one group.

BUT THAT MEANS 35 percent of those surveyed are anxious to blame the party of Clinton and Obama, compared to 34 percent who want to say it’s Donald Trump’s fault. As for another 15 percent, they say it’s the fault of Republicans in Congress.

It also seems that 47 percent of those surveyed said immigration and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program were a worthy cause to bring other government activity to a halt, while 39 percent said it was not.

That compares to a similar poll taken earlier this month in which the sides were evenly split 42 percent apiece on that very same question.

So it’s likely that Democrats gained a superficial boost from the day of inactivity – although I do find it interesting to see that their opposition splits between placing blame on Trump and Congress. It seems we have 15 percent who are just determined to refuse to say that Trump did anything wrong – even though I doubt that anyone in Congress would have moved toward a shutdown if not for The Donald whispering all those sweet nothings into their collective ears.

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