Senator John Cornyn: Obama’s shutdown strategy is to "maximize the pain" of the American people

Last night, Texas Senator John Cornyn held a conference call with conservative bloggers and journalists. As we enter Day 2 of the government shutdown, his comments from just a few hours ago are becoming even more relevant as the day goes on. Thought I’d share some of my notes from the call with you.

Fun fact: Senator Cornyn manages his own Twitter account (@JohnCornyn). I had a fun conversation with him about my Twitter handle when I was in D.C. last month.

Anyway, Cornyn started the call expressing his frustration at the shutdown but mainly at the Democrats’ refusal to negotiate: “I think it’s now clear that the President and Harry Reid were determined to shut down the government from the beginning, no matter what.” 

Obama originally had a meeting scheduled with Senate Republicans before the shutdown, but cancelled it at Reid’s advice. On four separate occasions, the House has passed bills that would have avoided the shutdown, but Reid has tabled all of them. Wouldn’t allow a vote or even a discussion on them. Obama “has decided that it’s OK to negotiate with the President of Iran [but not] Congressional Republicans.”

Cornyn was most annoyed about the most recent House bill Reid killed, which addressed the exemption from Obamacare for Congress and their staffers, and delayed Obamacare implementation for a year: “How can you argue…that you and your staff should be exempt [from Obamacare]? How do you go back to your district and tell your people that?”

Cornyn then turned to what he referred to as the “lawless delay” of Obamacare’s employer mandate. Cornyn, who previously served on the Texas Supreme Court and as Texas Attorney General, strongly objects to the president usurping the powers that belong to Congress to delay provisions of a law that are proving inconvenient for him. Cornyn said that a major problem is that Obama simply refuses to acknowledge the defects in Obamacare, and instead has chosen to provide protections to his chosen groups, unlawfully. In contrast, the Republicans “want to protect all Americans” from the pain caused by Obamacare.

One bright spot is that they did manage to protect military pay yesterday. Cornyn said that the Senate Republicans were prepared to go to the floor to fight for it, and he was very glad that the issue got settled. 

Noting that the debt ceiling vote deadline was October 17, Cornyn discussed the possibility that the shutdown debate would get tangled up in that: “What I hope does not happen is that we give up additional leverage in the upcoming budget debate…it would be a mistake to give any of that up, unless we get something significant like entitlement reform.” 

Cornyn said several times that he was opposed to entangling the continuing resolution negotiations with the debt ceiling vote, and was highly concerned that doing so would greatly complicate everything. Since Republicans and Democrats are not agreeing on any of the major issues, combining these negotiations could lead the Democrats to walk back some continuing resolution compromises to which they had previously agreed. 

“We’re in the minority and we can’t control what Harry Reid brings up…but we shouldn’t make it harder for our Republican colleagues in the House to unify” around negotiation points. “We need to talk to [House Republicans]…make sure we don’t get in each other’s way.”

Cornyn was especially skeptical of many of the most visible effects of the shutdown, calling the attempts to barricade WWII veterans in their 80s and 90s, many in wheelchairs, from visiting the WWII Memorial “ridiculous.”

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So now after another day of the shutdown, here’s where we are:

John Cornyn is right. Obama’s entire shutdown strategy is to “maximize the pain” of the American people.