ARE YOU READY TO SHUTDOWN???? A Wonksplainer Of 'Yeah, No, Really, It's Republicans' Fault'

Trump has a lot of heart for these people he also wants to deport. If he knows they're the same people.

You know the possibility of a government shutdown is serious when Donald Trump cancels his plans to go golfing. Or at least delays them. Trump had been scheduled to fly to Florida again this weekend, but this morning the White House announced he'd stay in Washington until Congress passes a spending bill to keep the government open. Democrats have him by the Titleists, so they want him to follow through on his pledge to sign a bill fixing immigration status for 700,000 Dreamers who were brought to the US as children. First, though, congressional Republicans have to include a DACA fix in the spending bill, which, oops, they forgot to do.

The House passed a continuing resolution last night which would fund the government for 30 more days; while it includes one Democratic priority -- a six-year reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program -- it doesn't include the other measure that most members of both parties keep insisting they want, that DACA fix. Republicans, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, have been insisting that a failure to fund the government would obviously be the fault of the Dems because they love illegal immigrants more than American children.

Which sounds like bullshit to us! Particularly since Republicans have been quite open about their intention to use CHIP as a means of trying to bludgeon Democrats into supporting a budget bill -- any budget bill, whether it helps DACA recipients or not. It's clever maneuvering, but as we noted yesterday, nobody's fooled by Republicans' sudden realization that CHIP needs to be reauthorized. The Rs knew that back in September, when they let CHIP funding lapse in the first place. And as Vox's Dylan Scott points out, it's an open secret that Republicans had been holding back any serious action on CHIP for maximum effect:

I asked one GOP lobbyist well plugged into House Rs if they had decided back in October to hold onto CHIP until they needed it:

“Yes.” https: //t.co/Q6lQvn5dax 

— Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) January 18, 2018