Don’t Buy The Spin. The Republicans Shut the Government Down.

The latest from the U.S. Capitol…

“The Senate was on the verge of rejecting President Donald Trump’s border wall demands on Friday afternoon, leaving the government on course for a partial government shutdown at midnight.

The chamber was set to defeat the House-passed bill, providing $5 billion for the wall and funding the government past Friday. A vote to merely advance to the bill with a simple majority was held open for more than an hour as GOP attendance problems and Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-Ariz.) opposition put even a procedural vote in jeopardy.

Earlier, Senate Republicans rejected Trump’s entreaties to eliminate the Senate filibuster to fund his border wall, the latest turn in a fraught battle over funding the government.

Trump on Friday said succinctly what’s on everyone’s mind: That congressional Democrats and the White House appear to be in an intractable impasse.

“We are totally prepared for a very long shutdown,” the president told reporters. And 10 days after declaring he’d be “proud” to take the blame for any shutdown in a fight for border security, he said it was now “totally up to the Democrats.” Read more from Burgess Everett at Politico.

A political stalemate is putting the federal government in danger of shutting down, and Arkansas is once again put in the position of dealing with the results of a short-sighted plan. Republicans control both houses of this Congress and the Executive Branch. This is a crisis of leadership that must be resolved.

 

“We shouldn’t play politics with our border security. A federal government shut down makes our borders less secure. Our administrative process will grind to a halt, border patrol agents will go without pay, immigration judges will hear less cases, and an already back-logged system will become even more bogged down,” said Democratic Party of Arkansas Chairman Michael John Gray.
“This shutdown will put a real hurt on all of us back home, impacting things our families really care about like the Cache River, Felsenthal, and White River National Wildlife Refuges. Forget blame, let’s just solve this problem.”
The U.S. Congress faces a Friday, midnight deadline to continue funding the government amidst obstructionist efforts.