Anyone talked about for days. it led every newscast, big speeches, rallies, primetime addresses, a sense across the country that something major was happening. remember when newt seemed to suggest he wasn t negotiating because clinton had ignored him on air force one. one of the all-time political gifts the public sided decisively with clinton and against the republicans. less than a year later, clinton cruised to re-election, running against the gingrich congress. that, he said, had shut down the government. more recently there was obama versus the tea party in 2013. remember that one? ted cruz told republicans to close the government down and not to blink until obamacare was defunded. they held out for 16 days, but that was it. obamacare survived. although cruz s star with the republican base did rise. this shutdown is very real to the federal workers affected. but on capitol hill, around the country, this one is different, so far. it s a partial shutdown, only a quarter of the gover
Plan should be? and what would you tell somebody out there saying, okay, if trump is wrong about this, if this is the wrong time, how much longer? because he said, one of the things he said yesterday was they asked me for six months, i said okay. they asked me for six months, i said okay. what would you tell the skeptical person out there, how much longer? we don t want american troops to be there one day longer than is absolutely necessary to protect the national security interests of our own country. so again, i think it s incumbent upon the president to articulate what s the plan, what s the purpose of our engagement there, what does he need to achieve that mission, and then to persuade members of congress to devote the resources necessary to do that. that s why congress has the authority to authorize the use of military force, not the president alone. our founders put that in the constitution as we are the only body that can declare war. we ve been pressing for that for precisely
Let me finish tonight with a government shutdown that feels different than we re used to. the president is firing away on twitter, but there s no sign of any serious negotiations, no votes looming, no loud rallies, no dualing press conferences, a lot of members of congress aren t even in washington, they re away for the holidays. democrats may be content to wait until the new year, that s when they take control of the house to make their move. republicans, they ve been burned by the white house already. they may be fine with waiting until then too. as politico puts it today this episode is remarkably low key. we ve seen the opposite of low key with he has shutdowns before, go back two decades to november of 1995, nut gingrich, the first republican house speaker in a 40 years, locked in a staring contest with bill clinton. that government shutdown was all anyone talked about for days. it led every newscast, big
Because he said, one of the things he said yesterday was they asked me for six months, i said okay. they asked me for six months, i said okay. what would you tell the sort of skeptical person out there, how much longer? we don t want american troops to be there one day longer than is absolutely necessary to protect the national security interests of our own country. so again, i think it s incumbent upon the president to articulate what s the plan, what s the purpose of our engagement there, what does he need to achieve that mission, and then to persuade members of congress to devote the resources necessary to do that. that s why congress has the authority to authorize the use of military force, not the president alone. our founders put that in the constitution as we are the only body that can declare war. we ve been pressing for that for precisely this reason, to force the president to develop and then articulate exactly what the purpose is there. if he can t do that, then we wouldn
Congress who might also prefer if that s the case because that potentially gives them somebody they can say the democrats have got some extra leverage here. maybe it gives them room to carve out a deal they wouldn t right now. well, i think that s kind of right. and steve, right now, democrats have no power. republicans are in charge of everything. they managed to shut down account government all by themselves, controlling the presidency and both houses of congress, and this is where we are. come january 3rd, democrats will be will have some power. they have the house and so i expect that they ll pass a funding bill without wall funding, and the president will say that s unacceptable. and who knows where we go from there. there isn t a lot of incentive for democrats to start putting offers on the table, particularly since as we ve seen, you can get a deal signed, sealed and delivered except when