Now in day 19 of the “Schumer Shutdown,” Democrats have once again exposed their contempt for the American people. It is a contempt that has, for generations, led to the treatment of their own constituents as collateral damage. It is one of indifference fed by an insatiable desire for political power.
There’s an old saying that rings true when it comes to Democrat leadership: “When they tell you who they are, believe them.” Democrats are openly admitting that they will not end the government shutdown, even if “planes are falling out of the sky” due to air traffic controller shortages. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently said, “If we open the government, we’ll lose our leverage.” Sen. Chuck Schumer went even further, boasting that “every day gets better for us” during the shutdown.
Better for them, worse for the average American family.
Here in Utah, the impact is immediate and deeply felt. Each week the government is shut down, our state loses an estimated $157 million in economic activity, with small businesses waiting on nearly $60 million in frozen loans and contractors facing more than $178 million in stalled federal projects. For 2,400 seniors who still receive their Social Security checks by mail, those payments might be delayed.
For our military families, air traffic controllers and the more than 40,000 federal employees across Utah, “every day gets better” rings hollow as the uncertainty of missed paychecks takes its toll.
The “leverage” that Schumer and Sanders brag about translates into real hardship: missed paychecks, delayed projects and financial strain for middle-class workers. Even worse, the Office of Management and Budget has begun permanent reductions in the federal workforce to offset the growing costs of the shutdown. The long-standing policy of guaranteed back pay once the shutdown ends is now being reconsidered. Long predicted, this “permanent reduction in force” would devastate families across the country who depend on these jobs. Sadly, this was preventable.
House Republicans passed a clean, nonpartisan plan to keep the government open, protect American jobs and ensure stability for families, seniors and service members. Yet Democrats, who once called government shutdowns “dangerous,” “disastrous,” “devastating” and a “non-starter,” blocked it in the Senate, even though they supported the same measure 13 times under President Biden.
Instead of voting to keep the government running, Democrats chose politics over people, gambling with the livelihoods of Americans. They prioritized taxpayer-funded health care for non-citizens and benefits for able-bodied individuals who do not work. Their unserious and unrealistic proposal would lock in wasteful programs and add $1.5 trillion in new spending, fueling inflation, deepening our debt and hurting every American family in the process.
This shutdown shows that Democrats are not interested in responsible governance but in alarmist demagoguery and political theater.
We witnessed this same strategy during the 2018 shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. At that time, Democrats’ leverage centered on protecting DACA recipients, children brought to the United States illegally by their parents. During that shutdown, Democrats held the government hostage in exchange for blanket protections for 700,000 individuals.
As a skilled and seasoned negotiator, President Trump sought to end the chaos with a compromise that would have doubled that number to 1.8 million individuals and provided a pathway to citizenship. In return, the president asked for a secure southern border, reforms to chain migration and an end to the abused visa lottery system. Democrats rejected it outright.
For anyone paying attention, Democrats revealed their true view of immigrants: a group to be easily manipulated into future Democrat voters. Absent from today’s $1.5 trillion demands is any mention of the 1.8 million DACA recipients they once claimed to champion. Perhaps these Dreamers are simply the latest group to join those in deep blue cities, ignored once politically inconvenient.
The same delusion drives today’s shutdown. Democrats are leveraging hardworking, middle-class Americans, especially federal workers, for political gain and to score points with their base by picking a fight with President Trump. The result is the same anxiety, despair and dysfunction we see in Democrat-run cities across the country: chaos, uncertainty and broken promises.
President Trump’s America First agenda rebuilt our economy, unleashed U.S. energy, secured our borders, restored peace abroad and put American workers first. He enacted the largest tax cuts for working families in history, made homeownership more attainable, strengthened retirements for seniors and reignited pride in American industry. Law and order have returned to cities like our nation’s capital, where, for the first time in generations, families once again feel safe on its streets.
The shutdown threatens to undo it all.
For communities exploited, manipulated and taken for granted by the Democrat Party, from inner cities to DACA recipients and now federal workers, the message is clear: Your future and dreams should not be used as a gambling chip.
To my Democrat colleagues: End this painful and unnecessary shutdown, reopen the government and join the growing ranks of those putting Americans first.