Good! A large number of conservative Republicans combined with most House Democrats to defeat a cobbled-together three week funding bill for Homeland Security.
As of midnight tonight many Homeland employees will either be furloughed, or have to work without pay (if their job is deemed essential).
The Republican leadership continues to brainwash itself into thinking a government shutdown will hurt them at the ballot box, when all the evidence from recent elections says exactly the opposite. After the 2013 shutdown the press screamed “Republicans did it!” as if it was a bad thing but the voters rewarded the Republicans one of its biggest landslides in almost a century in 2014. If anything, shutting the government down appeared to help the Republicans win elections. The public wants the government brought under control. Moreover, every shutdown helps prove how useless and unneeded that government is, the exact position conservatives have been touting for decades.
Let Homeland Security shut down. We didn’t need it for more than 225 years, and we don’t need it now.
Update: Congress has hurriedly passed a seven-day funding bill for Homeland Security.
The AP story linked above does the usual media hatchet job of spinning the story to make it all sound like the Republicans caused all the problems. As far as I am concerned, the failure here is the fact that not enough Republicans stood firm. A majority did, but we are still stuck with that handful of fake Republicans, such as Hatch, McCain, Flake, and Graham, that screw conservatives every time.