Editorial: GOP Wanted a Government Shutdown All Along

By Brian Hews

When President Obama was elected in 2008, he came to Congress with a Democratically controlled Senate and House.

In those two years he passed Wall Street reform, credit card reform, student loan reform, healthcare reform-Obamacare, the Fair Pay act, the expanded G.I. Bill, reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), expanded the National Civilian Service Corps, passed the 911 First Responders bill, passed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, bailed the auto industry out, passed a stimulus bill and enacted middle-class tax cuts.

But then in the midterms, for some unexplained reason, Republicans did really well and in 2010 took over the House.

And since then there has not been one single significant piece of legislation that has been enacted into law. Not one.

Zero legislative accomplishments. Why? Because they’ve been otherwise occupied. They were sworn in January 2011 and in April they threatened to shutdown the government.

By July 1, 2011, we saw the first ever debt-ceiling crisis in American history leading to the first-ever downgrade of our credit status.

By September they were threatening the take us off the fiscal cliff.

In early 2012 they were attempting another shutdown.

By December they were trying to push us over the fiscal cliff again.

This past January congressional Republicans were again talking about the fiscal cliff before they backed down.

And now, at long last, they got what they always wanted, a government shutdown.

We are deep in the year three and we’ve seen nothing from them as far as laws getting passed but we have had seven fiscal cliff/shutdown showdowns and forty votes to try and repeal Obamacare.

And it’s not a mistake; it’s all been planned. Now that they got control of one half of the government they’re shutting it down.

It’s is a decisive lack of respect for the government, it’s a willingness to go to extremes. There are tapes of Michelle Bachman, Mike Pence and others calling for the shutdown of the government

The Republicans see the shutdown as ‘great news.’

The New York Times reported House Republicans were ecstatic when they presented the shutdown plan, observing them leaving the House Chamber ‘downright giddy.’

These dysfunctional politicians have not passed any legislation into law since having control of the House but this is our seventh brush with the fiscal cliff and a shutdown

Which one do you think is more important to them? They wanted this all along.