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Le Moyne Professor Says GOP in-fighting to Blame for Budget Impasse, Looming Shutdown

https://www.aoc.gov/

A Le Moyne College political science expert doesn’t feel the federal government is heading for a shutdown at the end of the week if the president and Congress can’t agree on a budget.

“I think that the more likely outcome would be a continuing resolution, which is what we’ve had in the past to sort of get over these problems, which essentially amounts to kicking the can down the road – really, it would just be funding the government at its current level and then sort of revisiting the issue probably in the fall.”

Assistant Professor Jonathan Parent says the threat of a government shutdown has loomed over budget negotiations in recent years.  But he says this was more because of a split between the two parties in office.

“Usually, if you have any kind of sort of budget showdown, it’s because, you know, you’ve got a divided government – whether it’s Congress in control by one party and the White House by the other,” says Professor Parent. “But in this case you have a situation where you have a unified government and you’re still sort of facing this prospect of a shutdown, which is in itself really unusual and really quite surprising.”

Parent attributes much of the trouble passing the budget to conflicting agendas of factions within the Republican Party. He says one of the most divisive budget items is Trump’s border wall. 

“You still have this sort of internal fighting within the Republican Party, where you have the real budget hawks who don’t want to spend the money on this wall particularly if there’s no evidence that Mexico is going to pay for it, which there isn’t," Parent says. "They’re really reluctant to spend on what’s  going to be a really pricey item here, so you really got opposition both from within the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, which is probably why if there was going to be an issue that was going to lead to a shutdown, it’s likely to be the border wall.”

But Parent believes many other priorities laid out in the White House’s budget proposal could be obstacles, too.

“If the budget that does pass resembles anything what the White House sort of had proposed, then just about everything short of the military and border protection is likely to be cut very dramatically, to a point we haven’t seen, really, ever," Parent said.  "I don’t think that is very likely, but even if some sort of middle ground is reached, that’s still going to be huge cuts to a lot of these programs in a lot of these departments.”

If Congress does not decide on the budget this week, the government shutdown could occur Saturday, president Trump’s 100th day in office.

Scott Willis covers politics, local government, transportation, and arts and culture for WAER. He came to Syracuse from Detroit in 2001, where he began his career in radio as an intern and freelance reporter. Scott is honored and privileged to bring the day’s news and in-depth feature reporting to WAER’s dedicated and generous listeners. You can find him on twitter @swillisWAER and email him at srwillis@syr.edu.