House Democrats didn’t waste any time getting down to work. After taking their seats, they hung around on Thursday night to pass legislation that would reopen the government—legislation that snagged a few Republican votes in the process. And it should. Because the funding that Democrats passed in the House is identical to the funding levels that passed the Senate two weeks ago on a 100-0 vote. The only difference is that Democrats divided the funding into two bills, specifically holding out the funding for Homeland Security so that negotiations can continue over the proper level of funding for border security.
The votes were a testimony to the skill of Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership in setting a narrative and sticking to it, as the newly seated, most-diverse Congress in history were solidly united. Every single Democrat voted for the bills. The news was a little less cherry for the new leadership on the Republican side, where minority leader Kevin McCarthy watched seven Republicans sign on to the Democratic bills.
And now that bill goes to Mitch McConnell. Not to the Senate. Just McConnell. Because the Republican Senate leader refuses to even allow a vote on bills that exactly mirror the deal he thought he had with Trump, before Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh goaded Trump into a standoff that is crippling the government, destabilizing the economy, and taking paychecks away from hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans. In fact, through November, the total reduction in the number of Americans on unemployment through all of 2018 was 641,000. As NBC News reports, Trump’s government-sized pout has already put more than 800,000 people in a financial squeeze.
McConnell is refusing the vote even though, as the Washington Post reports, cracks are developing on the Senate side, as well. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Susan Collins (R-ME), both of whom are facing uphill runs in 2020 in states that Trump lost in 2016, are begging McConnell to do something to break the impasse, even if it means passing the same bill they already agreed to before Trump decided it was more important to score compliments on Fox than to have a functional nation.
Nancy Pelosi was adamant in her statements on Thursday. In an interview with the New York Times, she was asked if she considered herself Trump’s equal. Pelosi’s reply: “The Constitution does.” But Mitch McConnell isn’t looking at the Constitution. He’s not even looking at Fox News. He’s only looking at Donald Trump, and doing exactly nothing.
While the House was voting to reopen the government, McConnell repeated on Thursday that he will only allow the Senate to vote for things that Trump supports. He’s not only acting as Trump’s puppet, he’s acting as a roadblock for every single senator. Forget challenging Trump on a bill that passed the Senate with a margin that would overcome any veto. Forget even forcing Trump to own the shutdown that he said he was happy to own. McConnell will not allow a vote until Trump has pre-approved the bill they’re voting on.
It’s an unprecedented inversion of the way the government is supposed to work. McConnell is single-handedly attempting to erase an entire branch of government. Maybe he thinks that by doing so, Trump won’t be saddled with blame for the shutdown. And he’s right to some extent—because McConnell definitely shares that blame.
On the other hand, Pelosi’s strategy has carefully crafted a pair of bills that would allow reasonable Republicans—if any such exist—to claim they had acted to prevent damage to the nation while holding open debate on the future of the border. The Senate could easily pass, and Trump could sign, the bill that funded other parts of the government while continuing debate on funding for DHS.
By refusing to vote on either bill, McConnell makes it absolutely clear that Republicans aren’t just kowtowing to Trump over funding his wall, they are holding the entire government hostage to that debate. That’s not just an ugly position to be in, it’s ultimately untenable. In this face-off, Democrats aren’t just in the right, they have crafted a much, much better narrative. The longer this goes on, the worse it will be for the GOP.
The cracks that are already showing in the Republican’s front, in both the House and the Senate, are there for a reason: They own this shutdown, and all its effects, 100 percent. Pelosi and the Democratic House have held out an option that would allow Republicans to reopen the government while continuing to argue on “the wall.” If they refuse, they lose. If they accept, they also lose … but that second loss at least comes with a temporary halt to the damage. Obeying only Trump does not.