The US federal government has been partially shut down during the weekend although the official period might be longer than that, by the time you read this article it may still be ongoing.
When this period of shutdown crisis will end and how it will end, no one knows, instead, both sides are busy with accusing each other of hypocrisy, blame-shifting and holding the blame. The needs of their country are placed on the second place for them.
The Senate's failure to approve a one month spending bill might be one of the causes of this shutdown crisis. The bill is part of a four temporary fixes in a fiscal year which is already one-third over. The votes "against" which were mainly from the Democrats, assured that the measure will cut deportation reliefs for more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants arrived in America as children.
Positioning themselves in such way puts the Democrat party in straight contradiction with their stance in 2013. Back then they tried their best to block a similar shutdown planned by the Republicans which was meant to force former president Obama to abort the procedure regarding the health insurance measure.
But not only the Democrats are to be blamed this time. The shutdown started taking action just minutes after president Trump called in the leaders of both parties down to the White House. He asked them to negotiate a deal while a bipartisan group of senators presented him with an arrangement, that leading to a wicked rug-pulling from under their feet.
The obvious compromise - pairing a fix for the so-called "dreamers" with cash for the border security - is more than likely to pass the House and the Senate with ease due to the majority of "yes" votes. But the Republicans, who are holding the majority in both chambers of Congress, showed signs of hesitation to bring this up to a vote.
What this sad political episode showed is the constant decline of the civic and patriotic values in our country due to elected politicians who usually think that the country is theirs.
As for the Democrats, a slight change in their tactics would be useful. Their goal – to keep almost one million people safe from deportation to countries they have no idea about – is worthy, but shutting down the government is not the best decision in order to achieve it.
As for the Republicans, they should listen to our long-time suggestions. They really need to distance themselves from their wicked, erratic president. The Republican party is already faced with the challenge of demographic evolution. Trump only makes things harder for the party as it has to deal with more and more anti-republican views among their electorate.
This type of approach regarding the government funding is not in favor for any of the ruling parties. While some might think that the losers are the federal employees or the American and foreign tourists trying to visit a federal site, the real losers are the two parties. Although they seem to be drawing lines in the sand, in fact, all they do is to dig their own graves.