BUDGET/POLITICAL FIGURES: “Rand Paul and Nancy Pelosi have virtually nothing in common. But on Thursday [2-8-18] night, the conservative Kentucky firebrand and San Francisco Democratic leader teamed up to push Washington into what Capitol Hill dwellers are calling the dumbest shutdown fight ever.
Incensed that a bipartisan budget deal would balloon the national debt, Paul delayed a roll call on a long-term budget agreement until after the midnight deadline to fund the government. That set in motion a shutdown that ultimately lasted just over six hours — even though Paul’s protest didn’t change a single word of the document, and he knew it wouldn’t from the very beginning. Pelosi, meanwhile, rallied House Democrats against the bipartisan agreement that she herself helped write, threatening to tank the bill in the lower chamber, too.
Democrats withheld their sorely needed votes for a dramatic few minutes on the House floor. But ultimately 73 Democrats defied Pelosi and helped Republicans reopen the federal government without a single concession on immigration, the wedge issue in the faceoff… The entire spectacle was a reminder of the sorry state of Beltway politics. Even a bipartisan deal blessed by party leaders of both chambers can get caught up in extraneous drama.
In fact, a shutdown had been so unthinkable that the Office of Management and Budget did not issue guidance to agencies until dinner time, hours before funding would run dry. Around that time, when Paul took his protest public, exasperated lawmakers and staffers settled in for an all-nighter Thursday evening with the sole purpose of allowing federal employees to show up for work in the morning.”
-Rachel Bade and Seung Min Kim, “The dumbest shutdown ever,” Politico, Feb. 8, 2018 06:49am