Let's talk about the GOP still prolonging the shutdown fight.... - Belle of the Ranch

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about the GOP still prolonging the shutdown fight.

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to end the House's little vacation and bring everybody back to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. Jeffries said, "The first thing that needs to happen is that the House of Representatives under the leadership of Speaker Johnson and Republicans need to bring us back into session so we can actually reopen the Department of Homeland Security. Stop creating chaos at airports all across the country and forcing people, including what happened to TSA agents for weeks, to work without pay.”

Then he pointed to the fact that the Senate has unanimously approved a route to fund everything except ICE and Border Patrol while the House sits on its hands and added “there is a bipartisan bill that has been sent over from the Senate not once but twice. Every single Democrat, every single Republican in the Senate supports that legislation.”

He went on to explain the Democratic Party's logic behind pushing this route. "House Democrats support that legislation so we can reopen every other aspect of the Department of Homeland Security, including TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA, and our cyber security professionals, while continuing to work on the effort to get ICE under control.

Meanwhile, large factions of the Republican party want to continue to hold funding back to try to skip out on talking about reforming ICE and Border Patrol. As an example, Rick Scott said, "Let's make this simple. Caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund law enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again. If that's the vote, I'm a no.”

To be fair, Republicans have good reason to be worried about another budget reconciliation attempt. The last one was a failure that produced the package Trump likes to call the one Big Beautiful Bill. That package was pushed by Trump and Republican leadership despite widespread opposition from the American people and bad polling.

Well, as more and more of the effects start to show, it's continuing to cause the GOP headaches, the latest of which is the realization by rural Americans that once again the experts and not Trump were correct about the effects on their health care options. Trump's promises of a rural health care fund have fallen flat because of the deep cuts to Medicaid that Trump insisted on and Republicans push through.

That being said, they don't have many good options. The Democratic Party has so far stood pretty united in their demands for ICE reform, and without their votes, they can't move the funding. Meanwhile, Trump is making statements and demands that show he's lost touch with his own voters. With Trump's political power declining, Republicans are looking at a recalibration but seem to want to wait until after the midterms to do it. That might be too late for many of their careers.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.