Wednesday on MSNBC, commentator Bill Kristol said Senate Republicans were likely to override a veto by President Donald Trump to open the government without securing funding to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kristol said, “There’s six other departments of the federal government that are now shutdown. I think it may be a third of the government. It’s a partial shutdown, those departments haven’t had full appropriations. The House is going to pass a bipartisan legislation that already passed the Senate, appropriating funds for Agriculture, EPA and all these agencies. Now, this seems abstract and for now maybe a couple of museums are closed. But these are real agencies that do real things for real voters and real interest groups who are in touch with real senators. I think with the Agriculture Department shuts down and can’t roll over loans and can’t fulfill various obligations to farmers, when EPA can’t tell a business, yes, we are signing off on this, so you can go ahead and build this—suddenly the businessman calls up his or her senator, I would say, including Republican senators and says, ‘What’s going on here?’ I mean, fine, have a fight about the wall and DHS if you want, Homeland Security, didn’t the House just pass the bipartisan appropriations bills that everyone agreed to in the Senate already? Can’t you pass those?”
He added, “I think people underestimate how much political pressure there will be on Republican senators to accept the six appropriations bills that the House is going to pass, which are not connected to Homeland Security and not connected to the wall and affect real people and real businesses and real citizens in these different states. So the notion that in the past, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate have said, ‘okay, sticking with the president here,’ but I’m not sure it holds this week and next week.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.