Washington Examiner investigations editor Sarah Bedford said Democrats don’t seem to act as if they will face serious consequences from voters for the ongoing shutdown.
The Department of Homeland Security shutdown has lasted almost six weeks, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday rejected the latest offer to fund it. He told the Washington Examiner that Democrats are “asking for things that have already been turned down” and claimed the party is “going in circles.”
Bedford said “No” when political commentator Hugh Hewitt asked whether Democrats realize they are “losing” the country’s Transportation Security Administration funding. She added that it seems the Democratic Party is “taking the opposite lesson.”
“Republicans have accused them, I think quite credibly, of moving the goal post on what a DHS funding deal could look like,” Bedford said on The Hugh Hewitt Show. “They don’t seem to be acting in this situation as if they believe they’re going to shoulder any political blame for the long lines we’re seeing at airports and the other knock-on effects of the DHS shutdown.”
Bedford added that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is facing “an enormous amount of backlash” from the Democratic base over the shutdown, noting that he has twice agreed to deals to reopen the government in President Donald Trump’s second term in office. She said there is talk that Schumer may not be “the man for the moment,” raising questions about his leadership position within the party.
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“And again, you do have Democrats acting as if they don’t think that they’re going to pay a political price for this shutdown, and so there’s not a ton of incentive or pressure on Schumer right now to accept what might be considered by the [Democratic] base a bad deal,” Bedford said.
Trump signaled that he is open to a $5 billion cut for Immigration and Customs Enforcement if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, along with other amendments, on Sunday. He also pressed Republican senators to eliminate the filibuster and skip their two-week Easter recess, set to begin at the end of this week.
Approximately 100,000 DHS employees are going unpaid amid the shutdown.