I've seen Eleanor Holmes-Norton interviewed on multiple cable news shows this morning following her plea to fund the District of Columbia's budget as a separate, necessary item apart from the other Republican-led "mini-CRs" that House Republicans attempted yesterday.
While I sympathize with her pleas, I have to respectfully say to Congressional Democrats: Hold the line. This is the effect of a Republican-led government shutdown. It affects all areas of government and all Americans, and it's time that Americans see and feel and hear and smell the results.
But even more important than the visual of trash accumulating on the streets of the Nation's Capital is this - These so-called "mini-CRs" are part of a larger pattern of Republican behavior at both the national and local levels to compel minority-opinion outcomes in an extra-legislative and extra-judicial fashion.
I'll explain over the fold.
Abortion Abortion Abortion
Abortion is legal. If Congress truly wants to make abortion illegal, it can and should initiate a legislative bill to make it illegal. But anti-choice, anti-woman proponents don't do that, because they know that - when push comes to shove - any bill making abortion illegal in all cases would never pass through the legislature.
So rather than taking a proscribed path to accomplish the goal of making abortion illegal, states with Republican-controlled legislatures and a Republican Governor are implementing procedural, often regulatory "workarounds" to accomplish the same end.
Case in point: Virginia's TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law. Via Salon:
In the final weeks of 2012, state lawmakers and the state board of health voted to use the size of parking lots, the width of doorways and the length of corridors to begin shuttering abortion clinics in the state. After a lengthy and heated debate, state lawmakers approved a measure to regulate abortion clinics in the same manner as surgical centers.
The linked article outlines other similar efforts in other states to effectively accomplish the same result via regulatory fiat. So abortion remains legal - you just can't find a provider that's open because providers can't meet the arcane regulatory requirements to run their clinics and provide the service.
Not satisfied with only putting providers in a chokehold, Virginia and 20 other states require an ultrasound for a woman to get an abortion where she can find a clinic that is open and legally functioning. Having taken care of the provider side, these states and laws target the women themselves, putting undue burden and expense on any woman seeking an abortion. Again - abortion remains legal, but with significant restrictions that, in effect, deny access to abortion services.
This cowardly approach to abortion accomplishes what they are after without ever following the legal channels to make abortion actually illegal.
If You're Black or Hispanic or Young, Too Bad For You
Another example of identifying an end and taking extra-legislative, extra-judicial steps to accomplish that end is with voting rights. It's clear to anyone with a functioning brain (note: Fox News viewers are NOT included in the "functioning brain" category) that Republican-controlled states are taking steps to disenfranchise minority and young voters - in fact, any voters that are not likely to vote for a Republican. Rather than, say, introducing legislation to raise the voting age to 30 (or 50), or introducing legislation making it illegal to vote while a minority, Republicans yet again use the power of procedure and workarounds to accomplish the same end.
Voter ID requirements, same-day registration restrictions/cancellations, restriction of early voting, and the more subtle effects of (for example) not enough voting machines and/or staff in largely Democratic districts are rife in the US. Via PBS' Frontline:
“This is almost unprecedented,” said Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, which tracks voting laws and which published the analysis. “We have not seen this number of restrictive voting laws pass probably since the end of the 20th century. Certainly, this is the biggest rollback since the civil-rights era in terms of voting rights.”
But it's all about voter fraud, right? Wink-wink nudge-nudge.
The Song Remains the Same
These mini-CRs to fund the District of Columbia, fund the Veteran's Benefits Administration, fund the National Park Service - it's the same type of move. It's a maneuver to go around the normal legislative process to accomplish an end, to fund the things Republicans like and not fund the things they don't like. It's an effort to simply cherry pick what gives them some breathing room. Democrats must stand against this in total - Fund it all or fund nothing. You don't get to pick and choose what counts as "vital" based on your twisted minority ideology.
I watched Morning Joe this morning. Unfortunately, MSNBC is bad about making transcripts available in a timely fashion, so I can't pull the exact words; but suffice it to say that Joe Scarborough was lamenting the lack of passage of these mini-CRs. His argument essentially seemed to be that these three mini-bills proposed to fund vital services that - without their passage - would cause undue suffering.
I practically screamed at the TV. Apparently the worker filing for worker's compensation benefits doesn't see the funds he will receive from that claim as "vital" - at least not in Scarborough's eyes. The children with cancer who now can't particiate in an NIH-led clinical trial for treatment aren't missing out on "vital" services. The widow who can't apply for Social Security Survivor's benefits - or the disabled person who can't apply for Social Security Disability benefits - don't see those claims as "vital". The working, homeless mother who was relying on a Housing & Urban Development (HUD) initiative to receive affordable housing doesn't see housing as "vital". And even larger - the shutdown of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA - a department within HUD) and it's inability to approve FHA-back mortgages isn't "vital" to the overall economy, let alone to individuals trying to purchase a home. I mean - it's not like that can and will affect the overall housing recovery, a key linchpin of the economy, right? Eyeroll.
Time to Break Their Political Backs
We have to speak with one voice on this shutdown. Fund it all or keep it closed. ALL government services are vital to someone out there who receives their benefit. It's not just Veterans and seniors who matter in this society.
It's time to plant a stake firmly in the ground. Government matters. The ongoing absence of services across the board are going to bring that point home to the 70%+ Americans who don't proudly proclaim themselves as members of the Tea Party. It's going to give total lie to the vapid and inane comments Rep. Marsha Blackburn (the second-coming of Michelle Bachman, imo) Contact your electeds. If they are Democrats, tell them to stand firm on the budget and on the debt ceiling.
If they are Republicans, tell them to grow up.