Republicans can end shutdown
Hand wringing is OK if you are a furloughed TSA worker and without Friday’s paycheck. Putting food in your month and a roof over your head is now in jeopardy.
Hand wringing when you are a member of Congress with one vote out of 535 that could end the government shutdown is just theatrics — or pretending the emperor has clothes.
Republican legislators seem dumbfounded — like they have no powers. They have the power to garner enough votes to override a veto. They have the power to put substance over one man’s ego. They have the power to put 800,000 families first. They have the power to acknowledge that the justification for a wall isn’t even close to the damage done by shutting down the government for 19 days.
Use your power.
Nadine Bangerter
Rockland
So much for compromise
I believe a response is required to the column in last weekend’s paper by H.W. Brand, “Compromise wasn’t always a dirty word,” because it is a stealthy attempt at legitimizing the discredited southern school of Civil War history that says the Civil War was just a misunderstanding caused by northern radicals.
In order to make this point, Brand has to state things like another four states seceded “after Lincoln launched a military campaign against the secessionists.” Funny how he forgot to mention that the war started with the southern bombardment of Fort Sumter. And he condones the Fugitive Slave Act as a legitimate demand from the South that the North obstinately could not accept. And he trots out the quaint idea that compromise would have allowed slavery to wither away by itself — completely ignoring the financial investment the system had in maintaining slavery. And “murderous” John Brown.
Compromise is a necessary part of a democratic government; here it was the South’s unwillingness to make any concessions to the North and their determination to secede from the union the moment they lost a national election that brought about the war. So much for compromise.
Ray Estabrook
Belfast
Makes shutdowns illegal
The events taking place in Washington today perpetrated by our elected leaders is totally unacceptable.
With the world affairs as volatile as they are, partisan politics, and an idiot in the White House, legislation change or a constitutional amendment is imperative.
I believe that this country, with its apparent wealth, technology, military and role as leader of the free world cannot and should never be in a situation as we are now experiencing. A lousy situation of more than 1 million working citizens either out of work or working without pay. This all because of partisan politics and a senseless president who is holding the million or so citizens hostage for the funding for a wall, along with his cohort of Republican senators supporting him, and with total disregard to the hardship it’s bringing to all of these people. He is asking for $5.7 billion, which in no way will cover the cost or most of all solve the manufactured issue. The real cost is more like $25 billion to build a wall of that magnitude.
Here is a solution: pass legislation or amend the Constitution to make shutting down of the federal government illegal. Also, make the president, House of Representatives and the Senate responsible for a shutdown if it occurs, with all of them to join the working citizenry without pay, and also fined $10,000 per day for the period that the government is shut down.
This would surely reduce the partisan attitude and eliminate using our hard-working citizens as pawns held hostage to gain some political leverage.
Lewis P Pelletier
Winslow
More from Collins
Sen. Susan Collins speaks often but she is not actually doing enough to end the government shutdown.
As a constituent I am urging her to do just two things: Refuse to vote on any other Senate bill until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allows a vote on the House bills to reopen government (the ones that she already voted for). And state publicly that this is what she is doing and encourage all of her fellow senators to do the same.
Collins must use her position of leadership to accomplish something. If all she is going to do is talk, then I urge her to please resign immediately so someone else can do the job.
Peter K. Homer
Southwest Harbor