Washington is reaching a consensus: the government will shut down in 10 days — and Republicans will bear the brunt of voter disgust over it.
With House GOP leadership on Wednesday again showing little progress in moving a stopgap funding bill to prevent a shutdown, officials have begun a two-pronged effort to prepare for a shutdown that seems less avoidable every day.
There is the official side of government, where the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget has been working with agencies to make contingency plans for when funding runs out. And there is the political arena, where party operatives are focused on a different goal: inflicting maximum pain on their Republican adversaries and seeking to pin them with blame for an interruption in federal services and paychecks for government workers.
While both sides will inevitably throw blame at the other, Republicans are feeling a keen sense of apprehension that their party will suffer badly should a shutdown transpire.
“We always get the blame,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior appropriator. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.”
Yeah, except Democrats used to catch the blame all the time when McConnell filibustered something. It’s part of their strategy to do things and have the other party get blamed for it.
The tactic was for Republicans to sabotage government, and then use the failure they caused as a talking point about how government is useless and gets in the way. They could then rally people around the idea that government is an enemy that needs to be eliminated. But I think people are wising up to that strategy. There have been a lot of high profile problems recently that can all be linked to deregulation and rolling back government oversight.