Who’s winning the government shutdown? Or at least the arguments?
Republicans are blaming U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, for blocking a vote on the stopgap spending bill passed by the House because it does not contain roughly $1.5 trillion in healthcare spending.
Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College in central Missouri, said calling it a “Schumer shutdown” might not be wrong.
“Is it literally true that it’s up to Schumer? I suppose,” Smith told Missourinet. “I mean, he could probably rally Democrats, but right now, I think Democrats feel like, at least for now, public opinion is on their side.”
Smith said neither side seems interested in backing down. He suggested that the Trump Administration believes the longer federal workers go without pay, the more likely Democrats will be to negotiate an end to the shutdown.
Either way, he does not see the shutdown ending anytime soon.
“We can wait for, I think, quite a long time before normal appropriation and budgeting processes return to the Congress,” Smith said. “I think we’re going to have these games of chicken for the foreseeable future.”
As for whether the shutdown will play a role in the 2026 midterm elections, Smith said probably not.
“Well, it’s a long, long time…more than a year until the next election. And that’s an eternity in politics,” he said. “Unless the shutdown goes on much longer for a very long time and really hurts, most people will have forgotten.”
The shutdown began October First after Senate Democrats rejected a stopgap spending bill that would have kept the federal government running through November 21st.
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