Now that the House has voted to keep the government open, excuse me as I take a minute to set some things straight about a potential shutdown and the whole blame game thing.
While it is a *very* smart take to point out Rs have a majority in the House and Senate, it is also purposefully obtuse to ignore that in the Senate a minority can filibuster and block any legislation.
In fact, that is what Democrats suggest they intend to do: require 60 votes to keep the government open and to fund children’s health insurance.
What should be pretty obvious at this point is Democrats are TRYING to shut down the government. That, quite clearly, is their stated strategy.
This is not a on-one-hand-but-on-the-other situation. They’re not even hiding it. Democrats are openly saying they are using the filibuster to shut down the government to try to get something entirely unrelated.
My dear friends at the pod literally have a whip list urging Democrat Senators to shut down the government over DACA. 
I stress that Democrats are asking for something entirely unrelated. Because, to be clear, Democrats have no underlying objection to the CR or CHIP. They are, quite openly, voting ‘no' in an attempt to force action on something else.
We are not jamming anything on Democrats they don’t support. We’re just saying keep the government open and fund children’s health insurance while we continue to work out a deal on DACA.
But no, shut it down, they say.
As Chuck Schumer described this tactic in 2013, it’s “governmental chaos.”
Yet, now they are bragging about it to their base.
Tomes have been written about the shift of the Republican party under 8 yrs of Obama. Yet it has taken less than a year of a new president for Democrat's base to say you’re a traitor unless you shut down the government… and for Senators to go right along.
But that’s a whole other thread for another time.
Right now, Senator Schumer is rallying his members to block a bill to keep the government open – all to extort something unrelated.
But yes, or course, who is to blame?
