Next Saturday April 29th is Day 100 in the Trump administration. It is also the last day that the government will be fully financed and functioning. The government will shut down this weekend unless the showdown between whether the White House is going to be able to force another vote on Obamacare repeal or whether the Trump administration shuts down the government and blames it on the Democrats is headed off at the pass. This standoff, if it happens, will be the Trump administration's retort for the spectacular defeat of the Obamacare repeal and the failed coup on Paul Ryan by Steve Bannon, who was frying him in the right wing press for a while until begged (probably by Jared) to cease and desist -- "it's not time to blow up the Republican party just yet, Steve, I'll let you know when it's time. Trust me," Jared probably said or words to that effect.
So the clock is ticking and Trump will have nothing to present on Day 100. Therefore, Plan B will be implemented, and that is to create a theatrical event, namely shut down the government and blame it on the Democrats, who won't approve an insane budget and vote again on Obamacare repeal. This event is geared to appeal to the Trump voter, who wants bread and circus. Now even they will have to admit that shutting down the government might excite and energize Trump’s voters who don’t have much to celebrate and who wait for guidance. They will be unaware of what’s changed around them, but not for long. If the government shuts down the national parks will be closed, the trash will begin to pile up in the streets, business will be strangled; loans won't get approved, passports will go unprocessed, and here's a curve ball, applications for gun permits will be curtailed as well. This could be interesting; the NRA might have an issue with this, but if they did, it would be an issue against their own kind, the Republican regime which has implemented these draconian measures.
Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker shows us how as the hundredth day of Trump’s Presidency approaches, the White House seems excited about the coming clash in Congress.
Next Saturday, April 29th, is President Trump’s hundredth day in office, a historical marker used by the press to assess a new President’s progress since the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. F.D.R. was grappling with the Great Depression, and he had a pliant Congress that would have passed almost anything he proposed. Presidents since then have often struggled to meet the expectations of the hundred-day report card but generally c,an point to a list of major legislative accomplishments. Trump does not have such a list. At the same time, the Trump White House is facing a much more consequential deadline, one that will help define his first months in office and perhaps his first term: absent a spending deal with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, next Saturday the government will shut down.
While the potential for a government shutdown has been overshadowed by other events—Syria, North Korea, the attempted repeal of Obamacare—the Trump White House is suddenly seized with the issue. “Next week is going to have quite high drama,” a top White House official, who sounded excited by the coming clash, told me. “It’s going to be action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention, but, trust me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans. And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This is going to be a big one.”
[...]
The big priorities for Democrats are the money for those people who need Obamacare subsidies, the protection of domestic spending, and increases for programs for opioid addiction and health care for coal miners, the last two being issues that Trump ostensibly campaigned on. These shouldn’t be a big deal, Democrats say, and they have accused the White House of throwing a grenade into negotiations in order to wrest some sort of political victory in the first hundred days. “For weeks, the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working well together,” a Democratic aide said. “Then, all of a sudden, the White House is looking at next week and they have nothing to show for the first one hundred days, and they either want a health-care bill to pass next week, which seems like a heavy lift, or to get more on immigration from this process. Even Republicans don’t want this fight, and they don’t want a shutdown on Day One Hundred of the Trump Administration.”
This seems like a stalemate to me. I can't see any way out of this. Some kind of insane confrontation appears about to take place unless cooler heads prevail and I am just wondering who those cooler heads are going to be. We don't need the trash piling up and nobody able to get a loan approved, and do business properly. This is rock bottom basic. It doesn't take a lot of political insight to realize that the government shutting down so-called non-essential services due to the fact that mean old Congress won't approve an insane budget and make other untoward concessions, is at the very least, ill-advised. When the roads aren't repaired and the street lights go out and stay out -- I don't know about you, but I live in L.A. and I'm not crazy about seeing it morph into Blade Runner, and it could, at the rate that things are going. I don't want to see the government shut down this weekend, but it seems inevitable. And I don't know what that portends, but every way I look at it it seems negative. We need to somehow back off, both parties and not do anything stupid. This is getting confrontational on a level that is starting to alarm me. This is one step beyond my comfort zone.