Shutdown May Inflict Heavy Price On Republicans In Poor Rural Districts
Members of Congress from Republican-controlled states may be about to pay a hefty political price due to one particular element of the government shutdown, according to a longtime conservative.
During a Monday segment on MSNBC's Deadline: White House, David Frum — who was a speechwriter in former President George W. Bush's administration — said Republicans' shutdown gamble is unlikely to pay off. He predicted there would be an "exit ramp" for the GOP in the form of agreeing to a deal on extending expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, but that a bigger problem was still looming: Trump challenging Congress' power of the purse under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution."The Constitution awards Congress power over taxing and spending. And Donald Trump has challenged that power in a very fundamental way," Frum said. "He is taxing, without Congress, thirty-plus billion dollars a month in tariff revenue, and he is spending without Congress. He is getting other forms of revenue than taxes."
"The reason the White House ballroom story is so important: It's not just the vandalism of an historical monument. It's not just the gaudy, bad taste of this ballroom. It's that it is being funded not by taxes, but by gifts from people who have business before the government," he continued. "So he's bypassing Congress as a source of revenue, and he's bypassing Congress' control of spending, and he's claiming the authority to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated and that he signed. So how do you do business with someone like that?"
Frum also pointed out that with funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) expiring on Saturday for 42 million Americans, many Republicans may already be feeling pressure from constituents to make a deal with Democrats. He pointed out that many residents of reliably red states are dependent on food stamps."There's a lot of poverty and hunger in poor, white, rural America," Frum said. "There are a lot of people on food stamps in poor white rural America that I think a lot of the people in Trump's gaudy circle assume that they can use food stamps and other things to squeeze the Democrats, because the Democrats are the 'poor people's party.' But that is not exactly true anymore."
"One of Donald Trump's achievements was to change the class basis of American politics. There are a lot more educated and affluent people in the Democratic coalition. There are a lot more poor and rural people in the Republican coalition," he added. "... If you're planning on running up the electoral score in North Carolina, for example, many of the people in the Republicans are counting on to make their gerrymander in North Carolina work, may be on food stamps."
