Late last week, our Congress reached an agreement with our President to end the partial government shutdown, but that agreement only lasts until mid-February, at which point we will face either another government shutdown or the spectacle of our President declaring a "national emergency" so he can build his vanity border wall. Thus today I urge you to call your Reps and Senators, using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a smartphone), and tell them, explicitly, to prevent either of these occurrences from happening next month.
Don't believe the hype that Congress is somehow powerless to prevent these things. Congress can vote in favor of their next appropriations bill in numbers that will override a Presidential veto, and they can repeal the National Emergencies Act which gives our President the power to declare a "national emergency" at the border. The first course of action does contain one significant peril: that House Democrats would cave to a Republican-flavored appropriations bill with all sorts of poison pills in it so that they can get the vote numbers past the two-thirds threshold that would override a veto. But this fact doesn't make hostages of us, for we have an absolute, inviolable right to give our honest counsel to our Reps and Senators, and they have an absolute, inviolable duty to do our will. Hence it's not a heavy lift for us to tell our Reps and Senators to stop playing games with appropriations bills and pass a bill that funds those parts of our government at appropriate levels, regardless of whether our Congressfolk act like it's a heavy lift for them.
Generally I encourage you to keep your messages to your Congressfolk short and sweet, but this is one time you may want to game it out for your Congressfolk at some length. I've said on numerous occasions that a government shutdown would be a perfect time for the kind of 9.11-style terrorist attack that "rallies America around our President." While it also seems that our President is too fixated on Venezuela to be hunting bigger game, or that he uses a government shutdown to demonstrate how "unnecessary" we should find our government, these could both be feints, and I certainly do not put it past this Administration to have already discussed the political "opportunities," such as war against Iran or a new wave of anti-free speech legislation, that a terrorist attack could bring. I think you'll want to tell your Congressfolk that if they're gaming it out this way, you're on to them. If enough of us say it, out loud, to our Congressfolk, I believe we'll make a difference. They can't function unless we're as naive as they need us to be, so let's show them we're not.
I suppose I should address the possibility that your Congressperson believes we should build a wall along the Southern border, by any means necessary. You'd be right to argue that a vanity wall would do nothing for border security and that there is no "national emergency" along the Southern border, but you won't win the argument merely by saying that. You will also have to remind your Congressfolk that our President couldn't get his wall out of a Republican-dominated Congress, either -- one that could easily have bypassed a Democratic filibuster by including border wall funding within a budget resolution passed via the reconciliation process -- and that, more to the point, our President is acting like a spoiled brat and that America is sick of all the drama he creates. When our Congressfolk finally get it into their heads that America is sick of the drama, they will bend to our will. But if we don't tell them that, in so many words, they'll pretend it's not happening. And you never give your Congressfolk that kind of opening.
So I guess a good script for your phone call would go something like this: "I'm calling to tell you to fund our government appropriately for the rest of the year, without poison pill amendments and without funding for our President's vanity border wall. I also urge you to repeal the National Emergencies Act which supposedly gives our President the power to build his wall. Like most Americans, I am sick and tired of all the drama our President creates, and it's your job, as a federal elected official, to demand more from our politics than just drama. His vanity border wall will do nothing to secure our borders, and frankly I'm afraid that another partial government shutdown will leave us vulnerable to a 9.11-style terrorist attack. And I'm further afraid that our Administration has already decided that a 9.11-style terrorist attack would be another big drama that would yield immense political benefits for them. So I think you would do well to be able to tell our posterity that you didn't let that happen." Tough toodles if they don't like what they hear; they're Congresspeople, and you're their bosses, so you have an inviolable right and duty to tell them what they don't want to hear.
Good luck and God bless.
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