On Wednesday the
Senate passed a bill that would end the government shutdown with immense amount
of bipartisan support with the vote being 81-18. It seems that Boehner realized
he could no longer fight this fight and saw that long term consequences were no
longer worth it for our country as he insisted House Republicans to vote in
favor of the bill. Once the bill was sent to the House of Representatives to be
voted on, it went to Obama, who signed the bill and officially ended the
government shutdown just a little after midnight on Thursday.
While this may
seem like something to celebrate, it is actually the complete opposite. Even though
the shutdown has ended, it still happened and with that many people were
furloughed, many public services suspended, and we nearly risked a default on
our debt. As Schumer stated, “this isn't a day for happiness or exaltation. We
spent two weeks risking extreme danger merely to end up right where we started:
opening the government, paying our bills, and negotiating a budget."1
Schumer believes that there is only one good thing that came out of this
situation and that is that hopefully tea party republicans have learned their
lesson, in that they can’t threaten the government to get what they want because
it won’t work. Schumer believes that Ted Cruz and other tea party Republicans
have reached their high point and that they won’t recover from this mess very
easily, therefore we are going to start seeing a more mainstream Republican
party.
With all this
happening on Capitol Hill, Schumer still had time to reflect on what was
happening back home with his beloved New York Giants. With the NY Giants having a really tough
season, Schumer was asked to predict which would end first, the government
shutdown or the Giant’s losing streak. Schumer bet his money on Congress and
clearly made the right choice.
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