The following editorial is an edition of Fireside Chats with Ryan, a political editorial column. All views, thoughts and opinions belong solely to the author and do not represent those of The Drury Mirror. 

This past weekend saw the re-opening of the federal government, after the longest shutdown in U.S. history. S&P Global, an American financial firm, estimates the costs of the shutdown at around 6 billion dollars, which is 300 million more than the funds President Trump requested to build the wall along the southern border.

Aside from the 800,000 government workers who were furloughed during the shutdown, the clear loser in this battle over government funding is none other than President Trump. The man who claimed to be taking a hard stance on immigration and is the master of making deals, folded like a cheap suit to Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic-led House of Representatives.

The bill, passed on Friday, Jan. 25 by the House and Senate, allows for the government to be funded until Feb. 15, at which point another new bill will need to be passed. The bill included none of the funding that President Trump requested for his wall but did promise that lawmakers would sit down to discuss border security at a later date.

A shot to the foot

Thankfully, the shutdown ending has avoided the worst possible outcome, which would have been Trump getting his funding for the wall. While the government has been shut down in the past over budgetary discretions, never has it been shut down for a specific issue like we’ve seen in the past month.

Before the shutdown began in December, a bill was passed by both the House and the Senate that allowed for government funding, but did not include funding for a border wall like President Trump has wanted for so long. Instead of signing the bill, Trump vetoed it, and we know the story after that.

After last Friday, we now see who Donald Trump really is as a politician; he’s a man that’s all about talk, and not about action. At the first sign of pressure from federal workers, like the TSA, Trump cracked in his holdout for funding, conceding to a bi-partisan deal to temporarily re-open the government.

A temporary fix for an inevitable problem

While federal workers went back to their jobs on Monday, Jan. 28, the relief will only be for a short moment. If no deal is reached by the deadline, the funding will lapse and the government will shut down again.

In a press release from the Rose Garden on Jan. 26, President Trump stated that he was willing to escalate the situation at our southern border to that of a national emergency; such an action would necessitate military intervention and allow for funding to build the wall, bypassing Congressional approval.

The real question about this is, why is it a national emergency now? If President Trump can wait three weeks to declare it, then why involve the military and emergency funding? And on top of that, why is this subject coming up now? Republicans had control of the government for two years and had plenty of opportunities to pass a bill to allow for funding to construct a border wall.

In the end, it’s clear that this shutdown was a waste of time that cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars, and only serves to illustrate how this battle will no doubt continue in the coming weeks. Perhaps if Donald Trump, the so-called dealmaker, can be bested once, he can be bested again.

Written by Ryan Smith.