Viewpoint: Our government is sick and Democrats complicating the cure

Karen Rubin

It’s not enough that Democrats had to cast 10 million more votes than Republicans in order to take control of the House, or that the Republican majority in the Senate actually represents only 33 percent of Americans, but control 53 percent of the seats.

But in three states (so far), following the Koch/ALEC playbook, Republicans have found a way to strip power from incoming Democratic administration, including the power to remedy voter suppression and to increase access to health care, contravening the will of the voters.

Wisconsin and Michigan are apparently taking up North Carolina’s playbook and if that is not enough, this year, North Carolina’s 9th district Congressional office was literally stolen by paid workers who tampered with absentee ballots, yet the Republicans are insisting on seating Mark Harris (who brazenly attended new members’ orientation) and state Republicans dissolved their own election board to forestall a new election.

Meanwhile, Florida voted (65 percent) to give those who had completed their obligations in the criminal justice system the ability to vote but incoming Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had to stop counting legal absentee ballots in order to ram through a narrow win, is undermining implementation.

Republicans have consistently demonstrated willingness for shameless, ruthless, unscrupulous tactics to retain power, including using the filibuster an unprecedented amount of times to obstruct anything and everything Obama, elected with the greatest number of votes in history, tried to accomplish.

But when they took control of the Senate, they pulled the trigger on the “nuclear option” to prevent the Democratic minority from having any say in confirmations once the Republicans took over the majority in the Senate.

In the House, Republicans shut out every Democrat, including concocting the most extensive tax giveaway in history without even letting Democrats see the legislation.

What is most notable about the Republicans who have been installed in power – not necessarily through popular will – is how contemptuous they are of government, of the American people, of the values and ideals this country purportedly is founded upon. Rule of Law, for one. One-Person-One-Vote. Due Process.

These are rhetorical weapons dredged up when it is convenient.

It should be astonishing and repellent (and frankly disqualifying) how easily the Republicans shut down the government – they did it to push back against Obamacare (which was duly enacted into law, mind you). Trump has made it clear – sounding 20 times in the past several months – his zeal in shutting down the government. Now it is over the heinous, racist and wasteful edifice he wants to erect across a 2,000 mile border with Mexico.

But this is a partial list of what Trump’s government shutdown has caused:
• The Violence Against Women Act, which supports programs that assist survivors of assault and their families, has officially expired (no surprise there, with the utter contempt of women’s reproductive rights, women and children, Trump and Republicans have shown)
• Staffing for the office responsible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is reduced by 95 percent and will run out of money in January
• Some 40 percent of Food and Drug Administration staff and 65 percent of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff are furloughed – even as a new threat of Ebola has risen (one American health worker is quarantined in Nebraska)
• 95 percent of NASA personnel have been furloughed, even as the lives of three US astronauts on the international space station are compromised, along with tens of thousands of workers at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Each week the government is shut down costs $6.5 billion in lost economic growth, which could exacerbate what is now a slowing economy. The 800,000 impacted government workers may never recover from the interruption in income – forcing them to spend down retirement and college savings or go into credit card debt – compound over time.

If the incoming Democratic Majority in the House yields to Trump on the border wall, he will not hesitate to shut down government again – most immediately over the next time the Congress has to vote to raise the debt ceiling, exploding by $2 trillion because of the Republican tax scam (without closing any loopholes) and coming economic slowdown, while Trump throws money away (it’s ours, not his, after all) – billions on his despicable, inhumane war against immigrants.

He will demand cuts to the social safety net – food stamps, CHIP, Medicare, Medicaid – or threaten to forever destroy the “full faith & credit” of the U.S. Because he can.

Now, the Democrats seem determined to compound their problem in actually being effective, handing over whatever levers they might have to accomplish anything in the face of only having control of the House, not having any power in the Senate or the Executive Branch, and with the Supreme Court, now firmly in the hands of a radical conservative majority. Incredibly, incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi is entertaining new rules that would give Republicans veto power over what legislation the Democrats seek to pass. This is supposedly the work of the so-called “problem-solvers’ caucus” of which our own Representative, Tom Suozzi, is very proud to be a part.

Democrats seem determined to get to 2020 without a single “win” while opening up themselves to charges they were only interested in impeaching Trump by giving the Republicans more ability to veto whatever they want to accomplish.

The obstruction which Republicans managed so well throughout Obama’s term somehow managed to smear Democrats with the blame for government failing the people, opening the way for Trump, improbably, to offer himself as the “savior” for the Forgotten Man who would get things done. And now, the Democrats are doing it again.

My request to Suozzi’s office for comment was ignored.

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