Make no mistake: There is no #SchumerShutdown. Anyone who’s been conscious for the past week knows there was some kind of shutdown, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer definitely doesn’t own it. Neither does House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, or progressive Democrats or anyone else the GOP wants to point its finger at.
The government shut down because Donald Trump rescinded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals maliciously and purposefully — and Congressional Republicans let the Children’s Health Insurance Program funding run out with absolutely no intervention on its behalf. What’s worse is that both of these things happened despite overwhelming public support. According to a CBS News poll, for instance, as many as 70 percent of Americans support DACA, while more than that percent of Americans support expanded funding for children’s health insurance programs in states and on the federal level — even if that means an increase in their taxes. Essentially, Republicans captured two hostages in the process — hard-working young people fearful of deportation and sick children without the means to pay for treatment — and told Democrats to pick one.
Despite the failed deals and (vulgar) round tables that defined the 2018 shutdown, we’re not playing a game of political checkers here. We’re talking about actual lives, living and breathing people who are vulnerable and have everything to lose. The tokens that McConnell and Trump are playing with — the tokens they are betting in the center of the table for border security and a “wall” — are young people who’ve known no other home, who’ve established businesses and homes and made lasting relationships in America. They’re little kids with chronic health problems, with heart problems and lung problems, with terminal illnesses, that stare death — or at the very least pain and isolation — in the face every day.
To the Grand Ol’ Party, the solution is easy. CHIP has more support, and so naturally, CHIP is what Democrats should opt to save. But there are times when normative morals supersede a small numerical difference in public opinion. To choose CHIP over DACA simply because more people support it is to turn our back on the young people our former president tried to establish a pathway to citizenship for. It’s to deny the very bare bones notion of what it means to be an American, which isn’t race, ethnicity, language or even country of origin. Rather, it’s a unique identity forged by higher ideals like freedom, commitment to diversity, equality, tolerance, togetherness and contribution.
Maybe DACA’s not politically worth a shutdown, but morally, it’s worth a whole lot more, along with CHIP, its very existence serving as ironclad proof of our federal government’s commitment to the most vulnerable sect of our society.
Democrats shouldn’t have to pick one, but they definitely should pick the one. Folding to Trump is a dangerous road that we don’t want to walk down provided we don’t have to. What ought to happen and what needs to happen is a sit-down with Congressional Republicans. Only then can we hammer out a decent bipartisan deal that guarantees both CHIP-funding and DACA. That’s our job, and it’s our only job. It’s up to the Republicans to get their president, who’s currently basking in the influence of white supremacist hacks in the White House, to start making compromises in order to establish a more sound America, one that is committed to its ideals of equality.
