Trump Uses Federal Government Shutdown to Excuse Attacks on Environment

A federal government shutdown began October 1. Earlier in the week, Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with Congressional leaders to discuss ways to avoid the shutdown. Republicans in Congress followed Trump’s lead by refusing to even pretend to negotiate with Democrats. As a result, repeated efforts have shown that Republicans lack the 60 votes to pass a budget resolution in the Senate.

The Trump Shutdown is underway.

Shutdown Stakes

While the specific demand of Congressional Democrats at this point is to include a continuation of Affordable Care Act health insurance supports in any continuation budget bill, the overall stakes of this showdown are even higher and much wider. The confrontation is over whether the Trump agenda will have another year and a half to run unchecked, or whether members of Congress will finally force moderation of his destructive policies.

“Trump and Republicans need to stop gutting essential services that make life safer, healthier, and cheaper, and instead work together on bipartisan solutions to address the affordability crisis they’ve created. People are facing skyrocketing costs across the board, from health care, to groceries, to energy bills with Trump and Republicans in complete control over the federal government. Yet instead of working with Democrats to make our lives better, they’ve spent this year unlawfully taking back billions of dollars from communities while giving handouts to billionaires,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. “As energy demand soars, they’re trying to take away our affordable clean energy choices and good jobs and instead spend taxpayer dollars on more expensive, slow, and dirty fossil fuels. It’s time for Trump and Republicans to get serious about working with Democrats on bipartisan bills to fund the government, get people back to work, and protect communities, families, and our environment.” 

Trump Uses Shutdown to Attack Environment

In the meantime, Trump is using the shutdown as an excuse to accelerate his defunding and deregulation efforts that were already underway, and which he intends to continue to pursue anyway. 

In the words of U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL6), “We now have no National Flood Insurance program if there is a hurricane and FEMA’s disaster relief fund is virtually out of money. The real nightmare scenario right now is what happens if we have another Hurricane Helene or Hurricane Katrina or another East Palestine rail disaster–those disasters where you critically need public servants who are trained, who know how to manage disasters. Whether that’s OSHA employees or the EPA employees or the Surface Transportation Board, those people were either already fired or have been furloughed. This did not have to happen, but it happened because Republicans decided to not negotiate and thought they could steamroll and just get their policy priorities to hurt every American.” 

“Federal disaster relief for the victims of climate-change-fueled disasters like Hurricane Helene had already slowed to a snail’s pace in North Carolina and elsewhere,” said Dan Crawford, NCLCV’s senior director of public affairs. “Trump has gutted FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) and the National Weather Service, which is responsible for the early warnings that save lives during major storms. Now Trump – who incredibly still denies that climate change is even real – is planning to furlough another 4,000 employees from the underfunded Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). Millions of people in our state and across the southeast are at risk of facing another catastrophic storm without either flood insurance or emergency relief available.”

The federal government is on track toward catastrophe under the Trump Administration. The Trump Shutdown will show whether there are still enough spines in Congress to force a course correction.