Democrat lawmakers are threatening a to take away the pay of our active duty military and law enforcement officers if Republicans don’t agree to secure legal protections for 800,000 illegal aliens. Democrats putting illegal aliens before our active duty military and law enforcement officers really shouldn’t surprise anyone. For the Democrats, it’s not about what’s right, or what the majority of Americans want to see happen, it’s about the votes, it’s about the keeping their anemic party alive…
In 2013, Senator Schumer appeared on ABC’s This Week with Democrat ally George Stephanopoulos to help Democrats smear the Republicans who threatened to shut down the government over Obamacare. Watch Senator Schumer warn Americans about the seriousness of shutting down the federal government, including “To have us default…could…and there’s a pretty high chance, send us into a depression worse than the one in 2008.”
Daily Caller – Democrats are threatening to hold national security hostage, potentially costing the economy billions and forcing hundreds of thousands of federal government employees to go without pay in exchange for securing legal protections for 800,000 illegal immigrants.
Congress has three days to strike a deal to keep the government funded through October. If members fail to come to an agreement by Jan. 19, all “non-essential” government employees and active U.S. Military personnel will be working without pay (including troops currently deployed). Funding for agencies like federal museums or national parks will also be cut off.
Congressional Democrats are apparently content with allowing military and law enforcement personnel to go without pay to secure protections and benefits for illegal immigrants and members of their extended families.
As the clock ticks closer to the Friday deadline, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi aren’t backing away from their demands to tie a legislative solution to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to the must-pass spending bill. Democrats think they have the leverage to force leadership’s hands-on immigration, believing a government shutdown would look poorly on Republicans, who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress.
“The fact remains the only way to guarantee the legal status for DREAMers is to pass DACA protections into law and do it now,” Schumer said Wednesday. “For that reason, a resolution to the DACA issue must be part of a global deal on the budget.”
Pelosi has been careful to show her cards publicly, tacitly throwing her support behind a bipartisan agreement struck last week in the House and Senate that shields DREAMers from deportation, maintains chain migration, provides under 6 percent of the funding Trump asked for construction of the border wall and continues the Obama-era visa lottery program. The Trump administration, along with a number of conservative Republicans in Congress, are against the proposal, arguing that it does too little to stop chain migration and opens the nation up to a host of economic and national security threats.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said Tuesday that he will vote against any budget resolution that does not include protections for DREAMers.
What Dems Are Really Threatening To Do
Shutting down the federal government has some true and lasting consequences, which is probably why it has only happened four times since the 1970s.
When Republicans were the minority party in 2013, they forced a government shutdown over Obamacare’s individual mandate after years of trying to stop the program from taking effect.
The federal government closed its doors for 16 days, and the results were far-reaching. Some 800,000 federal workers that were deemed “non-essential” were furloughed without payment and an additional 1.3 million government employees, including active duty military personnel and civilians, had to work without pay.
Military and active duty federal employees were paid retroactively in 2013, but there is no legal guarantee that these individuals will receive payment for their work in the event of a government shutdown. Members of Congress have to first come to a short-term spending agreement before agencies, like the Department of Defense, can authorize paying their employees.
“In case of a potential government shutdown, the Department of Defense has no legal authority to pay any personnel – military or civilian – for the days during which the government is shut down,” the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) states.
The chance of Republicans and Democrats striking a budget deal that includes protections for DREAMers and their parents remained slim as of Tuesday evening.
