Category: *45th POTUS Donald Trump

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Government Shutdown: Fanning the Blame

Following the three-day government shutdown over the past weekend, fingers have been pointing in all directions. The House spending bill that would have extended the shutdown deadline to February 16 included measures that addressed various immigration issues, including funding for the Mexican border wall that was a cornerstone of the Trump Campaign. The bill did not, however, address the legal status of those who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), so most Democrats voted against it. Congress did not have enough votes to pass the funding bill, and this resulted in the government shutdown.

On Monday, Democrats and Republicans reached a temporary agreement that President Trump signed. The agreement would restore funding for the federal government until February 8. In the meantime, the daunting task of coming to a bipartisan solution for DACA recipients and border security, as well as for a longer-term agreement government spending, faces Congress.

Insults and blame for the continued lack of a permanent solution continue to fly across the news and social media outlets.

“This is the behavior of obstructionist losers…” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stated, referring to the Democrats who voted against the spending bill.

“A failure  of gargantuan proportions on the part of the Democrats” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“It would be hard to figure out who is responsible for the shutdown, unless someone involved said, ‘our country needs a good shutdown.’ Then, it would be pretty easy,” tweeted Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Democratic Congresswoman from Florida, and former Democratic National Committee Chair).

Some of the responses to the government shutdown approached hyperbole in their attempts to vilify the Democrats who voted against the spending bill. The Trump Campaign, for example, issued the following ad over the weekend, on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.

In its support of Trump’s border wall, the ad seems to blur the distinction between DACA recipients and illegal immigrants who are criminals. It suggests that “Democrats who stand in our way (of building the wall, and, presumably, voting against the GOP spending bill) will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”

New Trump Campaign Ad Blames Democrats for Murders Committed by Illegal Immigrants  |  Wochit Politics [2018-01-20]

Some Democrats see Monday’s stopgap agreement as capitulation by their fellow Democrats who voted in favor of it, since it doesn’t promise or include definite support for DACA. The immigration issue could also further divide the GOP within the party, since some Republicans want more extreme immigration reform than what most Republicans currently support.

Will today’s vote to end the government shutdown lead to even more division within parties? Can lawmakers put aside their differences, or at least refrain from tweeting them in the form of blame and insults, long enough to draft a bipartisan spending agreement that will avert another government shutdown?

Shields and Brooks on government shutdown blame, Trump’s first year |  PBS News Hour [2018-01-19] 

Gorka: Americans Understand Shutdown Isn’t Trump’s Fault | Fox News [2018-01-21]

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HHS Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom: A Slippery Slope

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under Donald Trump, is creating a new enforcement division: The Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom. The new HHS division, supporters say, establishes protection (referred to as “conscience protections”) for health care workers who refuse to treat certain people (such as transgender people), or perform certain procedures (such as an abortion) due to religious or moral objections.

The Trump Administration’s creation of the new HHS division repeals an Obama policy that prohibited health care professionals from refusing to provide services on grounds of moral or religious beliefs. This reversal raises a number of issues with people who think beyond the doctrines that shape the world of any single group of people.

A source in Congress said, “It is expected that the HHS Civil Rights Office would devote resources and personnel to enforcing the new guidelines and ensuring compliance.”

A government agency with the name, Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom, sounds uncomfortably close to Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the enforcer of Shariah law in Saudi Arabia. Should an agency of the United States, which is not a religious state, establish a division whose purpose is, essentially, to enforce compliance with the tenets of one religious ideology or moral stance over another? Should our government be supporting anyone’s religious or moral convictions over anyone else’s?

On the one hand, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion in the United States. But freedom extends equally to all Americans. The principles of freedom of religion and other civil rights do not define freedom to the extent that one suppresses the freedom of someone else who is lawfully enjoying theirs.

One could argue that requiring health care workers to provide care or services that conflict with their religious beliefs or moral stance constitutes suppression of freedom for the health care worker. Which set of moral or religious beliefs should take precedence, then?

And how does one arrive at the idea that requiring a health care provider to administer health care (which it is their job to do) discriminates against the health care provider, if the health care service itself does not violate the law? Abortion, for example, is legal. Shouldn’t people who enter a profession perform the lawful duties and services that apply to their profession?

The establishment of the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom raises additional questions:

  • Isn’t the refusal to provide health care services to certain groups the equivalent of saying that they don’t deserve health care?
  • Does this new division, established to protect religious freedom, really protect every health care worker to act in his or her conscience, or does it just protect them if their conscience conforms to certain ideologies?
  • Will the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom also protect an objecting health care worker who refuses to even refer a person to a provider who won’t object to treating them?
  • Can the the U.S. government, in good conscience, really “devote resources and personnel” to the enforcement of compliance with this, while not addressing crucial issues such as affordable and accessible health care for Americans?
  • Will those who are opposed to a patient’s religious convictions (let’s say, “Christian,” for this example) be allowed to refuse to treat that person?

The HHS Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom perches on a slippery slope. The fact that it not only allows a health care worker to refuse to treat a patient based on personal beliefs, but enforces that stance, should scare us.

OCR New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division Announcement | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [2018-01-18]

HHS Expected to Unveil ‘Conscience Protections’ | Hot Trending [2018-01-17]

 

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