This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 27 episode of “Morning Joe.”
Speaker Mike Johnson once again refused to reconvene the House this week, designating another district work period, meaning no votes will be held for a sixth consecutive week in the chamber. But you can’t call it a “work period” if you’re not working.
Republicans have to know how bad this looks. You have federal employees, people in the military, air traffic controllers, who are working every day without pay — and then you have members of Congress, who haven’t set foot in Washington, D.C., in weeks, still collecting their paychecks.
Any Republican who thinks that’s not a political problem has their head in the clouds.
But the Republican Party’s problems don’t stop there. The U.S. Department of Agriculture now says that come Nov. 1, the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will not get their benefits. That doesn’t just affect Democrats; just like cuts to Medicaid, this will impact people in red and blue states alike.
While thousands of federal employees continue to work without pay and millions of Americans are on the verge of losing much-needed benefits, Donald Trump isn’t focused on reopening the government or on forcing Republicans to come to the negotiating table. Instead, he’s destroying the East Wing of the White House to build a $300 million ballroom and giving Argentina a $20 billion bailout.
This is going to cost Republicans. With just over a week to go until Election Day in Virginia, the latest Washington Post-Schar School shows former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger with a 12-point lead over her opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
Make no mistake, in a state like Virginia, a government shutdown makes a difference. When you have Republicans running Washington and federal employees are not getting paid, that makes a huge difference.
Voters know who’s at fault. It doesn’t matter if you have Republican members of the House and Senate running around yelling, “clean CR, clean CR.” Voters know which party has a monopoly on power in Washington, and they’re going to hold it accountable.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
