Believe it or not, members of Congress continue to get paid even when there is a shutdown on the basis that Congress refuses to fund the government. Elizabeth Warren has come out and stated that she will donate her salary during the shutdown. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is paid $223,500 per year. The Democrats fought to include a new top bracket raising it from $250,000 to $500,000 to reach 37% tax rate. It was embarrassing when you are earning close to $250,000 and you keep demonetizing the rich while being one.
Of course, Congress is excluded from Obamacare. They get their own golden deals of unlimited care. That is worth more than $50,000 annually which they do not include in a salary.
So any wonder why the members of Congress can let a shutdown go on and on? Easy, they still get paid when everyone else does not. Nancy Pelosi reiterated that Democrats will not agree to a border wall but joked that she’d give Trump $1 for it.
They believe they can make Trump look like the bad guy here and the shutdown can be a long one indeed. They have dug in their heels and it is hard to see how they can back down now without losing face, which is what they are trying to make Trump do. The fact that the wall would be $5.7 billion and one week’s interest bill to keep rolling the debt comes in at $6.7 billion illustrates that this is now just politics and not about pretending $5.7 billion is a lot of money.
This is simply a political standoff demonstrating that Congress has lost all civility and is incapable of managing the country going forward. There is no reversal in sight and we simply cascade in this death spiral into 2032. Perhaps now we can see that indeed the United States will cease to exist as we know it after 2032. The USA will be prone to separatist movements as well after 2024. That appears to be the target for absolute political disintegration.
The damage the Democrats have caused is truly undermining government. This confrontation as was the one they staged against Kavanaugh, has forever changed how government functions. The Democrats have crossed the line and in the process brought down the entire establishment. If the Democrats won the White House, then the Republicans would resort to the same type of tactics. In the future they too will smear people the Democrats put up for a position and they will refuse to fund the government unless they get their way. This is what I mean that we have crossed the line and there is no civility remaining. Government will no longer be capable of managing anything.
