Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave a stinging assessment of the state of the Republican Party that forced John Boehner to
abruptly resign both his leadership post and his congressional seat altogether. Here's a bit of what she told reporters Friday morning:
"Public awareness is the strongest, strongest opportunity we have for keeping government open. [...] Shutting down government is drastic. In our caucus this morning, we had read to us by our ranking member Nita Lowey all the things that will happen if they shut down government—who are affected in terms of our veterans, who are affected in terms of children and nutrition. It is a stunning array. One of the things that people have said is, if we only let government shut down for one day but really did not mitigate for the damage, then the American people would really know how bad this is. [...]
"[When the 2013 shutdown came] we lost at that time 25 billion dollars in our economy, it curtailed the growth of our GDP, it put people out of work—at least 30 percent of the federal workforce are veterans—are veterans—and we all profess to worship at the shrine of our veterans. And yet, they will very casually shut down government, having various degrees of impact on our federal workers.
"This all comes down to the fact that the Republicans in Congress, if you take some of the issues we talked about, are anti-governance—not government. [...] The degree of government has been the debate in our country for a couple hundred years. How much government? How much federal, how much local and state? So that's a legitimate place of where you are on the spectrum. But anti-governance—shut it down and celebrate—that is unacceptable. And President Washington, as he was leaving office, cautioned against political parties of which were at war with their own government. And that's really what we're seeing evidence of now—a political party at war with its own government."
