CaliToday (06/11/2025): As the record-breaking federal government shutdown entered its fifth grueling week, paralyzing key agencies and forcing 800,000 federal workers to miss a second paycheck, the political blame game in Washington escalated to a fever pitch.
In this environment of crisis, comments from figures like Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) were not just observations they were strategic political maneuvers. The provided text captures Schiff's core argument on a CNN broadcast: the shutdown was a political disaster for the Republican Party, and they alone were to blame.
But to understand the full weight of his remarks, one must look beyond the simple "D vs. R" narrative and into the specific, high-stakes context of that moment: The Border Wall.
The Central Conflict: A Wall vs. a Paycheck
This was not a typical budget dispute. The 35-day shutdown (from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019) was engineered by President Donald J. Trump over his single, unmovable demand: $5.7 billion for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is the crucial subtext for Schiff's quote. When he stated the GOP "controls everything but refuses to negotiate," he was referring to the Republican-held White House and Senate.
By "refusing to negotiate," Schiff was painting a specific picture for the American public:
The newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives (which had been sworn in on January 3, 2019) was passing "clean" spending bills to reopen the government without wall funding.
President Trump vowed to veto any bill that didn't include the wall money.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even bring the House's bills to the Senate floor, stating he wouldn't hold a vote on anything the president wouldn't sign.
This created a "catch-22" that Democrats framed as a crisis manufactured entirely by the GOP. Schiff’s argument was that Republicans were holding the entire government—and the paychecks of federal workers—hostage for a policy that had just been implicitly rejected by voters in the 2018 midterm elections.
The "Electoral" Leverage
Schiff's reference to election results was a direct nod to the "Blue Wave" of the November 2018 midterms, which had handed Democrats control of the House.
His message was a powerful one: the American public had actively voted to put a "check" on the president. By forcing a shutdown over the very issue that had defined his rallies, Trump (and the GOP senators enabling him) were seen by Democrats as ignoring the will of the people. This is why Schiff could confidently claim the shutdown was "hurting the Republican Party" and why he noted even the president "admitted" this reality on social media—polling at the time overwhelmingly showed the public blamed the president for the impasse.
The Human Cost and the Strategic Pivot
The provided text notes the shutdown's effect on "hundreds of thousands of unpaid employees." This cannot be overstated. By the fifth week, the crisis was acute:
TSA agents and air traffic controllers were working without pay, leading to massive airport delays and security concerns.
The U.S. Coast Guard, a branch of the armed forces, missed paychecks.
Food banks were set up for federal workers in the nation's capital.
This human toll provided the perfect backdrop for Schiff’s final, critical point about healthcare.
When Schiff said, "I want to see the government reopened, but I also want to see people be able to afford their insurance," he was performing a classic political pivot. He was contrasting the Republican "obsession" (the wall) with the Democratic "priorities" (kitchen-table issues like healthcare).
It was a strategy designed to frame the GOP as being out of touch, willing to inflict real pain on American citizens for a "vanity project" while Democrats were focused on "the people's business." As the White House fired back that Democrats were "politicizing" the crisis, Schiff and his colleagues made it clear they believed the political (and moral) high ground was theirs.