House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) says that the Republicans in Congress are engaged in a “shutdown effort” over the budget negotiations, and Jeffries warns his potential doubters that his accusation is “not hype, not hysteria [and] not hyperbole.”
[NOTE: As for doubters, one (previously dominant) school of political thought believes it’s essentially electoral suicide for a party to shut down the government going into an election. Yet the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has been demanding that House Republicans give no quarter on the Continuing Resolution to keep the government open, demanding that MAGA play hardball despite the risks.]
Jeffries: This is a shutdown effort. That’s not hype. That’s not hysteria. That’s not hyperbole. It’s history. In the DNA of Maga Republicans, it’s consistently been an effort to make extreme ransom demands of the American people… pic.twitter.com/nq2e7t2bRq
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2024
“In the DNA of extreme MAGA Republicans,” Jeffries says, “has consistently been an effort to make extreme ransom demands of the American people. And if those extreme ransom demands aren’t met, you shut down the government.”
Jeffries says history, not hyperbole, guides his assertion, citing shutdowns in the mid-1990s, in 2013, and in 2018-19 — then a shutdown “record 35 days” Jeffries recounts — over disagreement about the funding of “Trump’s border wall.”
The situation presently has some Republicans trying hard to service conflicting loyalties, resulting in paralysis.
Trump’s demand — what Jeffries characterizes as an extreme ransom demand — on this occasion is the inclusion of the SAVE Act, which Democrats view as part of the former President’s election-aimed gamesmanship, couched in the name of election “integrity.”
NBC News captures the essence of the story with this lede: “House Republicans on Wednesday defeated their own plan to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month, with the party divided over the length of a short-term funding bill and what, if anything, should be attached to it.”