And by the way... withholding a *quarter* of the travel budget? Come on. Withhold the entire thing! Withhold the entire Air Force One budget if Trump tries to dismantle CFPB or withhold funding. Use your power.

The point is that Dems made the shutdown about health care (which led nowhere) and not about actually ensuring appropriations are spent when signed into law. There were lots of mechanisms to make sure of that. They're using them in random cases. But funding is still being withheld.

it is similar to the trick conservatives are trying to pull with the birthright citizenship clause. take something whose meaning is absolutely clear from just a plain reading of the text and transmogrify it into something that says its opposite through obfuscation and esoterica