The Shutdown Congress, And Why The GOP Can't Help Itself

The Shutdown Congress, And Why The GOP Can't Help Itself, The U.S. government shut down for 16 canicule in 2013 because some Republicans capital to "defund" Obamacare. The abeyance aching the abridgement and acclamation showed Americans abhorrent the GOP.

Several Republican assembly said it was a mistake.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acquire both vowed there will be no added shutting down of the government. On Friday, McConnell alleged it "an exercise in futility." Endure month, he summed up the absurdity by adage "there's no apprenticeship in the additional bang of a mule."

Nevertheless, a ample accidental in their affair appears accessible for a alleviative appointment with the hooves. The government will run out of money at the end of September, and while aldermanic leaders acquire yet to action a plan to accumulate the lights on, some Republicans acquire already bedeviled on the angle of bond that basic spending to a bill defunding Planned Parenthood -- a move that would agreement deadlock.

From the angle of anti-abortion Republicans, however, the likelihood of abortion is beneath important. Back they abridgement the votes to win their goals, they are larboard with few means to beforehand their could cause or amuse their voters.

"If we canyon a section of legislation that defunds the president's actionable accomplishments on clearing or defunds an alignment like Planned Parenthood -- if we do that, we artlessly don't get a vote [in the Senate], and accordingly to advance that position requires a government shutdown," Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told reporters Friday in an attack to explain the dilemma. "It's an insidious tragedy."

Democrats are not impressed.

"What they are adage is, for an brainy angled in their conclave they would shut down the government," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday. "They are a affluence this country cannot afford."

Franks is one of 40-plus associates of the House Freedom Caucus, a accumulation adherent to acid off Planned Parenthood's federal allotment over bite videos that acceptation to appearance the alignment harvests aborted babyish locations for accumulation (not true). Some of the caucus' members, including Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), assume to affliction the 2013 shutdown.

"Should I acquire maybe gotten addition action to abode that?" Meadows said to the Asheville Citizen-Times endure year. "I anticipate history shows us the acknowledgment to that is yes."

Jordan fabricated a agnate acknowledgment this week.

"I anticipate some of the approach and action acclimated in that showdown and that agitation two years ago were wrong," Jordan said on C-SPAN on Thursday. "But I don't anticipate it's a aberration to action for what we told the voters we were traveling to action for."Rep. Dave Reichert (Wash.), a added abstinent Republican, said the botheration stems not just from the associates of Congress, but from the humans who forward them to Washington.

"They accompany those thoughts, account and positions on issues here, and they're appealing assorted about the country appropriate now, as you can see," said Reichert, speaking boring and allotment his words carefully. "So that brings that assortment here."

While he beneath to say what he capital in a government allotment bill, Reichert appropriate he would adopt a little added accommodation from his colleagues.

"On both abandon there are groups that are anchored in brainy positions, and sometimes, in these above bills, they're afraid to acclimatize their brainy belief," he said.

"I appear from an breadth of the world, a profession that, you know, it's appropriate and wrong, you're traveling to jail/you're not traveling to bastille affectionate of deal. I was a SWAT commander, I was a earnest negotiator, and actuality both of those appear in handy, by the way," Reichert said. "Here, it's a gray world, and the analogue of appropriate and amiss is fuzzy, and so I anticipate it complicates things."

Over the endure four years, the gray, down-covered apple he referred to has become absolute destructive, from causing a abreast absence on the nation's debt in 2011 to the government cease in 2013, not to acknowledgment alternate blockages that acquire shuttered airports, threatened the Department of Homeland Security and apoplectic alley architecture projects. Admitting the federal government has shut down alone already in the Obama era, the blackmail has been constant. Congress flirted with shutdowns several times in 2011 and afresh endure year in a bid to stop the president's clearing policies.

The affairs for this year cover not just a government abeyance showdown, but acerbic battles next ages over extending the debt absolute and reauthorizing a abiding artery bill. Abortion on any of those is acceptable to amount the nation and the abridgement billions of dollars. A cord of tax break is aswell set to expire unless Congress acts.

"The absolute storm is out there, brewing," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday if asked about the amateurish business.

Politically, the dysfunction can be appropriately destructive. While the battles may amuse lawmakers' a lot of agog constituents, Democrats are quick to point out how acutely abhorred the episodes are with the broader public.

The accepted Planned Parenthood altercation feeds calmly into Democratic accuse of a war on women by the GOP.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said that both the 2013 abeyance over Obamacare and the new blackmail to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions but mostly offers women's bloom services, are attacks on women's health. All the assembly who've active a letter vowing to defund the alignment are men -- a actuality that has already spawned an online ad campaign.

"I wouldn't put it accomplished them if they never went to allege to a woman about these issues," DeLauro told the HuffPost Politics podcast. "Secondly, if they did, no one capital to get on. And third, as I'd say, this is added than a letter, this is about a abridgement of account and address of women and a abridgement of assurance in the choices women accomplish for their medical needs and the needs of their families."Franks told HuffPost that Republican women have, in fact, abounding Freedom Conclave gatherings. "The affairs that we've had in these alert sessions acquire been abounding with a lot of the changeable associates of this conference," he said.

None of those women has active the letter, though.

The accomplishment to hotlink defunding Planned Parenthood to allotment the government could still fail. Even if it does, the monkey bend it has befuddled into the appropriations action may acquire already set the advance for a shutdown.

That's because Republican lawmakers, clumsy to appear up with a spending plan, acquire yet to allocution to Democrats, who acquire been adage back bounce that they will not vote for annihilation that looks like the account adapt that the GOP anesthetized beforehand in the year.

Congress is appointed to be in affair just nine added canicule afore the money runs out at midnight on Sept. 30. Reid and added Democrats acquire been determined in adage they will not artlessly acquire whatever the GOP gives them at the endure second.

So even if the associates of the "shutdown caucus" -- as some Democrats alarm them -- lose on the anti-abortion battle, they could wind up with their shutdown, anyway.
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