Schumer Driving Dems Off Cliff
(This article first appeared on PennLive)
I predicted last week at the PennLive forum, “The Trump Administration Year One – Our Readers Speak Out,“ that if Democrats insisted on including in the government funding bill any sort of legalization for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, they would lose the showdown over the shutdown to President Trump. And, so they did.
Before he reversed gears, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) was poised to drive the Democratic Party right off the cliff. He was doing exactly what in 2013 he promised he would never do when he said, about then Republican efforts to add non-related legislation to a 2013 government funding bill, “No matter how strongly one feels about an issue, you shouldn’t hold people hostage.“ Fast forward to last Friday when Schumer and his Democratic colleagues did just that. – Our Readers Speak Out,“ that if Democrats insisted on including in the government funding bill any sort of legalization for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, they would lose the showdown over the shutdown to President Trump. And, so they did.
In the run up to the 2018 shutdown, the House of Representatives passed a government funding bill with every provision supported by Democrats including a six-year extension for the Childhood Health Insurance Program. Yet, over in the Senate, Democrats, led by Schumer, demanded a legislative “fix“ to save former President Obama’s constitutionally infirm DACA program be added. Not only was Schumer’s tactic brimming with hypocrisy, considering he had excoriated Republicans for doing the same with Obamacare under President Obama, it was entirely gratuitous. DACA doesn’t expire until March.
Schumer’s attempt to push the controversial DACA legalization into the government funding bill blew up in his face. And Democrats are squarely to blame for this shutdown, temporary though it was. Yes, Republicans control the Senate. But with only a 51-seat majority Republicans needed nine Democrats to bring the funding bill to the Senate floor for a vote. With only five Democrats voting to move the bill forward, the Democrat filibuster stood unbroken; this prevented a floor vote and caused the government shutdown.
The irony is that Schumer had long since maintained Democrats would never shut down the government over “immigration.“ In 2013, Republicans attempted to use the government funding bill, and the desire of most politicians to avoid a government shutdown, to push through a defunding or at least delaying of Obamacare. Schumer castigated Republicans for doing so. He called such a tactic the, “Politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.“ He claimed Democrats would never use such tactics and ironically gave the example that Democrats strongly favor immigration reform but that shutting down the government over it would be “governmental chaos.“
Interestingly, Schumer and the Democratic Party leadership haven’t always been so embracing of illegal immigration. In 2009, Schumer gave a speech declaring “Illegal immigration is wrong and a primary goal of …reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal immigration.“ In 1994, U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) complained, “illegal aliens“ were “pouring in,“ that was an “obvious problem“ and “not what [America] is all about.“ In 1993, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blasted politicians who “make it easy to be an illegal alien.“ Reid said “no sane country“ would offer such a “reward“ for being an “illegal.“
In his 1995 State of the Union then President Clinton gave an impassioned speech attacking illegal immigration. He said, “All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.“ Then, after giving a Trumpian oration about how he would secure the border and double down on deportations, Clinton declared, “It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.“ In 1993, Hillary Clinton said, “We don’t want to do anything to encourage more illegal immigration into this country.“ In 2003, Hillary Clinton declared, “I am adamantly against illegal immigrants.“ In 2014, speaking of Central American children arriving illegally in the U.S., Clinton said, “They should be sent back…“
The Democratic Party of 30, 15 and even 4 years ago stood squarely with middle America that looks askance at illegal immigration. But, the advent of Donald Trump and his “America First“ Republican Party has caused many blue-collar working Democrats, once the solid center and base of the Democratic Party, to move toward Trump. So, the Democratic Party of today is now being pushed by its extreme leftwing. At least until their leadership read the polls revealing the American people were strongly opposed to the Schumer Shutdown and moderate Democrats started bolting Schumer’s charade.
Rest assured the Democrats will be at it again soon enough. In exchange for providing the votes necessary to reopen the government, Schumer got what he already had the Friday before the shutdown – a promise to address DACA in the coming weeks. And, with the Democratic Party’s leftwing all fired up for amnesty, we’ll soon have a donnybrook on immigration once again.
Marc. A. Scaringi, of Camp Hill, is an attorney and PennLive Opinion contributor. His work appears biweekly.
