A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Apathy all the way down.
WaPo columnist Paul Kane‘s latest, “DHS shutdown could go on for a while — because voters aren’t paying attention,” may well be a parable for our time.
Government shutdowns usually need a pressure point to force a compromise that brings them to their end.
There’s no sign of any such pressure point in the current shutdown, which has left the Department of Homeland Security shuttered.
Unlike the six-week shutdown in the fall, when every agency lacked funding authority, more than 95 percent of agencies now have their full-year budgets. National parks are open with full services, passports are being processed without shutdown-related delays, and the troops are under no threat of losing their pay.
ICE and Border Patrol agents, who work under the DHS umbrella, also have no need to fear missed paychecks, because the massive domestic policy bill President Donald Trump signed in July surged money into those immigration enforcement agencies.
Plenty of other agencies, ranging from FEMA to the Federal Aviation Administration to the Secret Service, are twisting in the wind, however. And Transportation Security Administration workers will miss their first checks in the next few days.
But there’s little indication the American public is at all concerned with the state of affairs: Lawmakers who returned to the Capitol on Tuesday, after a more than 10-day stint at home, said that the DHS shutdown was not registering as a top concern with constituents.
On the one hand, I get it. People are busy with their daily lives, and absent personal inconvenience, people don’t notice government shutdowns. Hell, I work for the federal government and wouldn’t know DHS wasn’t funded if I weren’t an avid news consumer. On the other, if Congressional Democrats care enough about the issue to inflict this much stress on the likes of TSA agents—for the second time in a few months, I might add—maybe they should actually be using their platform to get the word out?
But, of course, the public is actually pretty cognizant of the core issue:
Several Democrats said if the DHS funding came up, it was in relation to constituents’ concerns about the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who engaged in violent and deadly clashes this winter in Minneapolis.
“The bulk of them have been about concern for ICE, about ICE killing people, about the brutality that we are seeing ICE do,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-New Mexico).
Obviously, this concern will be much more salient in Democratic-leaning districts. But even Republicans have signaled displeasure with ICE’s overreach to pollsters. While a strong plurality (45% in an NPR/PBS/Marist poll conducted at the end of January) supports the crackdown, 27% think ICE has “gone too far.” (Granted, a statistically identical number think they’ve “not gone far enough.”)
But Congressional Democrats aren’t leveraging that sentiment or the shutdown.
Facing a Feb. 14 funding deadline, both the House and Senate adjourned more than a day early for the annual Presidents’ Day recess, providing a week-and-a-half window for lawmakers to travel abroad to security conferences and spend time with constituents at home.
The House returned to session Tuesday afternoon, then adjourned again Wednesday morning so that Democrats could trek 50 miles west of the Capitol for their annual policy retreat. Republicans will leave in a couple weeks for their own retreat at a Florida resort.
The Senate, as is its modern custom, left session just after lunchtime Thursday.
No serious negotiations have been held yet to broker a deal. Democrats have suggested they are in no hurry to come to the negotiating table, and, if anything, are being encouraged to hold out longer.
So, to sum it up: the public doesn’t care that there’s a partial government shutdown, and neither the people forcing said shutdown nor those who ostensibly want it ended care enough to do much of anything about it. Meanwhile, poorly-paid government workers* are paying the price. Again.
*I earn a decent salary. But an entry-level TSA agent makes a little over $40,000 a year, depending on locality.
This becomes on topic at the part I bolded:
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-delusion-of-a-rules-based-order-is-dead/
ETA: I was responding to this:
” A Republic, If You Can Keep It ”
The actual post does not appear to match that misleading heading. I guess I should read posts before commenting.
@charontwo: They’re part and parcel. The surest route to an autocratic executive is a supine legislature and apathetic public.
@charontwo: I see your point. I don’t think your comment is all that off-topic, though. Apparently neither does James.
James is complaining that elected Democrats don’t seem to be doing much. They are stopping any money from going to ICE, so that’s a thing. I think that it’s up to us, that delegation isn’t going to work, and it’s only when we roar with our own voices that we make a difference.
@Jay L. Gischer: A government shutdown, even a partial one like this one, has pretty significant consequences. If you’re going to force one, you need to be using a megaphone. And it doesn’t appear that they’ve actually stopped the money from going to ICE.