The government is on the verge of a possible shutdown and one of the Republican Party’s biggest problems is that their outgoing members don’t even want to show up to work anymore. According to the New York Times, House Republicans who either lost their elections or retired—many with lucrative jobs already lined up in the private sector—have missed a number of votes over the past few weeks. They don’t want to work! And honestly, I don’t either!
Here’s the Times’s report:
But House Republican leaders are also confronting a more mundane and awkward problem: Their vanquished and retiring members are sick and tired of Washington and don’t want to show up anymore to vote.
Call it the revenge of the lame ducks. Many lawmakers, relegated to cubicles as incoming members take their offices, have been skipping votes in the weeks since House Republicans were swept from power in the midterm elections, and Republican leaders are unsure whether they will ever return.
As these members complain about working in cubicles, I sit typing away in the dark in my “home office” (my bedroom). You don’t see me not showing up to work!
According to the Times, one anonymous senior Republican aide said “some lawmakers no longer even wanted to see one another’s faces.” I mean, same. [Editor’s note: Rude?] But even when I am hungover from the holiday party and sick of my co-workers, I still drag my ass to work the next morning.
House leaders are worried that their party’s own laziness might be what does them in when it comes to this shutdown fight over Donald Trump’s border wall. Former House member and current Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito told the Times, “I don’t understand why people don’t come to work and work all the way through December when the taxpayers are paying them. I mean, finish your job.” Or don’t! Maybe every Republican can quit at once? That’s fine too.