Donald Trump proves each and every day that he is absolutely the worst president of the United States in recorded history. Trumps inept decisions continuously plague the nation, one after another. The latest, known as Trump’s shutdown has proven to be the longest, for 35 days.
The shutdown began on December 22, 2018 at midnight EST. It finally was lifted by Trump when he realized he could not push the system that he had paralyzed and the people he is directly responsible for putting out of work.
It occurred because this Republican President Donald J. Trump could not come into an agreement on an appropriations bill to fund federal government operations for the 2019 fiscal year. Not only that, not even a temporary continuing resolution could not be passed that would extend the deadline for passing a bill.
The CR appropriations bill was passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate (100-0), but Trump refused to sign the bill. So why would Trump not sign the bill that passed overwhelmingly in Congress.
The majority of people blame Trump for the shutdown, but in a conscious decision not to listen to the lawmakers in Washington, Trump decided to listen to conservative media commentators – Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who forced Trump in a trap, holding nine executive departments or agencies with about 800,000 employees getting furlowed for a second time in Trumps presidency.
So because Trump listened to these commentators, it caused major problems The list of problems is long, and I’ll update this column with the major issues that were created by the shutdown.
The main symptom cause by the shutdown was that a quarter of the federal government was unfunded for 35 days. 800,000 employees spread all over the country were without pay, while the U.S. Congress adjourned for 2018 and went home to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.
With the government closed down, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers who man airport security we not paid for at least 2 pay periods before the shutdown ended. But they had to work without pay. Eventually more and more TSA employees were calling in ‘sick’ and did not have required numbers of fully-certified staff to manage thousands of flights per day, over 43,000 flights.
Air traffic controllers had to work without pay. Some were taking a second job to make ends meet, and others were contemplating retirement. It was stated time and time again that the level of risk could not even be calculated as this unnecessary problem was totally unprecedented. Eventually the president of the flight attendant’s association, Sara Nelson was calling for a general nationwide worker’s strike to end the shutdown.
The shutdown also severely affected the FBI. Leftover resources available quickly dwindled, as FBI agents did not get paid for 2 pay periods, and intelligence work including sensitive investigations.
The shutdown virtually insured late tax returns for 2018, as the IRS was unable to process any tax returns for almost the entire month of January.
The number of people effected were staggering. Here are the estimated numbers per state.
State | Estimated number of federal workers furloughed or forced to work without pay during December 2018 shutdown |
Alabama | 5142 |
Alaska | 5347 |
Arizona | 7383 |
Arkansas | 2825 |
California | 39240 |
Colorado | 15754 |
Connecticut | 1227 |
Delaware | 406 |
District of Columbia | 78769 |
Florida | 14698 |
Georgia | 14441 |
Hawaii | 2515 |
Idaho | 6237 |
Illinois | 8341 |
Indiana | 3460 |
Iowa | 2619 |
Kansas | 3122 |
Kentucky | 6213 |
Louisiana | 5552 |
Maine | 1027 |
Maryland | 23346 |
Massachusetts | 7385 |
Michigan | 5133 |
Minnesota | 4790 |
Mississippi | 3617 |
Missouri | 12853 |
Montana | 6020 |
Nebraska | 2122 |
Nevada | 3450 |
New Hampshire | 1448 |
New Jersey | 4944 |
New Mexico | 5828 |
New York | 14360 |
North Carolina | 7072 |
North Dakota | 1485 |
Ohio | 6569 |
Oklahoma | 5620 |
Oregon | 9159 |
Pennsylvania | 12643 |
Rhode Island | 387 |
South Carolina | 2829 |
South Dakota | 2003 |
Tennessee | 6770 |
Texas | 32864 |
Utah | 10104 |
Vermont | 686 |
Virginia | 32830 |
Washington | 10923 |
West Virginia | 6025 |
Wisconsin | 2899 |
Wyoming | 3500 |
What about border agents, the people who are supposed to help keep criminals and illegals from entering the country. Of course they didn’t get paid during the shutdown too. Even though they were not being paid, they were able to secure non-interest loans in place of their paychecks. Of course, this was outright discrimination, as others could not secure loans and were not offered any.
Trump just doesn’t get it. Most Americans today live from paycheck to paycheck, and a vast majority of people do not have an savings funds to tide them over in case they miss a paycheck. But these Federal workers missed two paychecks. The very people that keep our skies safe, the air traffic controllers, did not get paid. Many other Federal workers that were furlowed will not even get back pay. All for what? All for Donald J. Trump’s vanity project, a wall that will NEVER get built. All for Donald Trump’s selfish interests; it happened because he made a rediculas promise and even couldn’t stick to it. Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall, but the President of the United States instead decided to punish his own citizens because the House would not send a bill over to the Senate that would provide 5.5 billion dollars for a border wall, a structure that couldn’t be built for no less than 21 billion according to may estimates.
So what’s next. Who in the heck knows, but it could never be good. The decisions of Donald J. Trump are not in the interests of the people of the United States. No president in U.S. History has provided so many un-truths, or outright lies to the people that he is supposed to serve. His popularity is nowhere but in the toilet bowl right now. Does Donald Trump care. Of course not. But he continuously mentions lie after lie, one being that he is the most popular president in U.S. history, and that he has done more for the country than any other President in his first two years in office. Of course that is another outright lie. Will the lying ever end. Most likely it will never end until Donald Trump either gets booted out of office by impeachment, or he is taken out of office for committing high crimes, or Vice-President uses the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
But Congress and the Republican party right now is Trump’s party. They would never go against him. At least not up to now. Maybe the Republicans will finally see the light if Trump creates another shutdown or calls a nationwide emergency because he did not get his way with the wall.
Tonight, Donald Trump gave his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives. I can only speculate what he said because I truly did not care to watch it. I didn’t want to hear him put out more lies, but unfortunately, the news for the next month will cover it and I’ll get to here the message anyway. But I’m afraid that it will be more of the same old reteric, more lies, and falsehoods that would only come from what I consider the absolute worst president in U.S. history. History is sure to bare that fact in the future.