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A year?
Author: TriSec    Date: 01/05/2019 11:00:15

Seriously.

Mr. Trump is talking that the government shutdown could last a year. I guess it's official then - the experiment known as the United States is over.




WASHINGTON — President Trump threatened on Friday to keep the federal government partly closed for “months or even years” if he did not get $5.6 billion for his wall at the southern border, and he warned that he was considering declaring a national emergency to build it without congressional approval.

Mr. Trump and Democratic leaders emerged from a two-hour meeting in the White House Situation Room without a deal to reopen government agencies that have already been shuttered for two weeks, and the two sides offered sharply contrasting views of where they stood. By day’s end, the two sides appeared to be still locked in a stalemate.

Democrats called the meeting “contentious” while the president and Republican leaders in the House called it “productive.” And while Mr. Trump announced that he had assigned Vice President Mike Pence to lead a “working group” to negotiate with Democrats over the weekend, Democrats said the phrase “working group” was never discussed.

“We told the president we needed the government open,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told reporters outside the White House. “He resisted. In fact, he said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time, months or even years.”

Appearing in the Rose Garden later, Mr. Trump confirmed the remark. “I did say that. Absolutely I said that,” he said, flanked by Mr. Pence; Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary; and House Republican leaders. “I don’t think it will, but I am prepared.”

The impasse, heading into its third week, has closed parts of nine federal agencies, including the Interior Department and the Internal Revenue Service, and left 800,000 federal employees either furloughed or working without pay. Mr. Trump expressed little concern for their plight, telling reporters on Friday afternoon that when he hosted members of the Border Patrol union — his political allies — on Thursday at the White House, they told him not to worry about them, and that he was doing “a great thing for our country.”


"months or even years".

Think about it. If somebody asks you, most of us would answer that the thing we could do without for a year is government, or Washington DC. But could we?

In Boston, the immediate effect was the closure of some national historic sites. Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall, the Charlestown Navy Yard, and both Presidential libraries here have been shuttered since the shutdown. History is my business now, and visitors to this city, especially from overseas, have been visibly upset by the closures.

Getting into Boston, most of them flew through Logan International Airport, and yesterday we heard about an increasing sick-out among TSA workers. I'm sure that makes all travelers safer somehow.

Next, imagine there's no money anywhere in your home. Most of us have experienced joblessness, via great recessions or otherwise. It ain't fun. During my darkest period, just having the cash to buy a fucking pizza felt like winning the lottery. Now try that for a year or longer.

The adults are back at work - Speaker Pelosi's first act was to approve and re-send the funding bill that was approved by the Republican-led Congress, minus one line item. It promptly died in the Senate.

I am beginning to wonder when the military's oath to "Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States, from all enemies foreign and domestic" kicks in?


 
 

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