The congressional leaders couldn’t contain their concern. Essential government services were at risk. Needy children could suffer. Disaster preparedness was under threat.
“You’re talking about women, infants and children who rely upon these supplemental nutrition programs that are now not being funded and being shut down,” Speaker Mike Johnson lamented on the Fox Business Channel. “They are affecting FEMA services in the middle of the hurricane season.”
Never mind that Mr. Johnson led Republicans this year in pushing through legislation to slash nutrition assistance programs as part of the party’s marquee tax cut law, or that President Trump has taken an ax to FEMA grants during his first months in office.
In the upside-down political messaging surrounding the shutdown fight, conservative Republicans, usually eager to assail government largess, have transformed themselves into enthusiastic evangelists for federal spending and programs. It is part of a bid by the G.O.P. to maximize the pressure on Democrats, who routinely advocate for government workers and services, to relent in the spending battle.
“It’s our veterans, our military personnel, T.S.A. agents, women, infants and children,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, said on Fox News as he ticked through those dependent on the government for their pay and benefits. “The list just goes on and on.”
There are limits to the Republican shutdown conversion — most notably Mr. Trump himself, who has been positively gleeful about the prospect of using a federal closure to lay off government workers and cut initiatives that Democrats support.
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The post Shutdown Politics Has G.O.P. Singing Government’s Praises appeared first on New York Times.
