Late last Monday night the 3-day government shutdown officially came to a close when President Trump signed a short-term funding bill. This bill will give the funds various government operations and agencies until February 8th. The government shutdown was due to the fact Congress failed to appropriate the necessary government funds before the old laws expired. In reality, though, it had more to do with DACA.
Back in September of 2017, Trump made a move to repeal DACA (for more information on DACA and what it means click here). Trump gave Congress until March 5th to come up with a solution for Dreamers although since then a recent court ruling has forced the Trump administration to partially restart DACA. Democrats have been trying to force Republicans to shield Dreamers from deportation, leading many Democrats to withhold their approval from government funding bill. Government funding bills need some Democratic support to win a super-majority and when they weren’t able to achieve this, a government shutdown occurred.
This isn’t the first time our government has shutdown. Rather it is the 19th time. As CNN journalist Doug Criss puts it “Federal government shutdowns in the US are not just about money. They often happen when one political party feels that threatening to shut the federal-funding spigot is the best leverage to use in a political battle.” In 2013 Republicans refused to support any spending bill that didn’t defund Obamacare. This shutdown lasted 16 days. In 1987 the government shutdown for one single day after President Reagan and Democrats clashed on whether or not to send aid to Contra. Typically one party gets all the blame after a government shutdown. For example in 2013 according to polls Republicans took the majority of the blame. In a new Politico article, while Democratic and Republican voters would point the finger at each other, Independents said they were more likely to blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown. So why did the Democrats back down so seemingly fast with little to no gain?
There are multiple theories. One of the most popular is that Democrats are scared to lose swing states in this upcoming election. There are at least ten red states with Democrats running for reelection where Trump won in 2016, including five where he crushed Hillary Clinton by winning in double digits. Instead of risking taking the blame, Democrats compromised almost entirely, in essence tucking their tails between their legs in an attempt to save face. Another theory is that a government shutdown just doesn’t sit well with Democratic voters. Back in 2013, the then Renaissance was the Tea Party who believed government is a problem and weren’t too sad to see it shut down, which is one of the reasons why it took Republicans longer to compromise. Democrats, on the other hand, see the government as the solution which lead them to the 2018 shutdown to balk before they could achieve anything. If anything this has shown the Renaissance that they can’t use the same tactics as the Tea Party: different audience different values.
So what does this mean? DACA citizens remain in limbo. Democrats appear to have lost the battle by being more worried about receiving votes than actually completing their goals. But now that a compromise has been reached federal workers can now return to work and Trump can go make his highly anticipated speech at the yearly World Economic Forum in Switzerland. Everything seems it will go back to how it was before until that is, February 8th.