Impeachment on collision course with possible shutdown
“There’s only so much Congress can do at once with the bandwidth they have in today’s day and age. And during a shutdown, for the Congress to continue to take up an inquiry in a serious way is very limited,” said James Wallner, a resident senior fellow in governance at the R Street Institute. “So the focus shifts to, ‘How do you end the shutdown?’”
Wallner suggested that Republicans’ insistence that the impeachment process is illegitimate could also lead to a lapse in funding.
“If members are sincere in their belief, or the president is sincere in his belief that this is a constitutionally invalid exercise of the House’s power … how in good conscience can they support funding for that exercise?” said Wallner, who previously worked as an aide to GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and the conservative Senate Steering Committee.
Wallner, who was a Senate aide during the October 2013 shutdown, said there was a danger history could repeat itself if conservative Republicans convince Trump a shutdown is in his interest.
“It’s the fundamental dynamic that confronted Republicans in 2013” on the health care law, he said.
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