Obama Shut WW2 Park Last G'vnt Shutdown, Trump's Cabinet Sec. Works Park Himself
The federal government shut down at midnight Saturday. As you may have noticed, there’s been chaos in the streets, looting from sea to shining sea, electricity outages, all sorts of — oh wait, no, we’re still all fine.
That likely has something to do with the fact that the federal government shutting down isn’t going to have too much of an impact on most people’s lives. The last time this happened, back in 2013, President Barack Obama realized this. That’s why he decided to dramatize the whole affair by shutting down national parks, including the World War II Memorial in Washington.
Back during that shutdown, the House Committee on Natural Resources noted that “the Obama Administration is going out of its way to take unreasonable and unnecessary steps to block public access to parks and monuments that isn’t warranted by a government shutdown.”
“For example, open air parks and national monuments, places without doors or gates, where people are allowed to visit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, have been barricaded off,” the committee added.
“In addition, none of these D.C. memorials were closed during the last government shutdown in 1995-1996 under the Clinton Administration. The Obama Administration’s closing of these sites is not something they are required to do; it’s something they are CHOOSING to do. The Obama Administration wants the effects of this government shutdown to be as painful as possible.”
So, what did Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke do this time around during the Schumer shutdown? He not only kept parks open, he personally worked at “cleaning up trash on the National Mall and welcoming tours of schoolchildren to the World War II Memorial with a smile,” The Daily Caller reported.
“We’re not putting up barricades,” Zinke told The Daily Caller. “Absolutely not. We’re passing out brochures until we run out of brochures. I’ll be out here every day.”
“I spent the morning walking around, giving brochures out,” he added. “I got a lot of thanks from both sides of the aisle. We will not weaponize our public lands.”
While he said that “(t)he visitor experience will be diminished,” Zinke told The Daily Caller that national parks and monuments “belong to the people and not the government.”
Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift echoed this sentiment in a statement.
“National Parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible while still following all applicable laws and procedures,” Swift’s statement read. “The American public and especially our veterans who come to our nation’s capital are finding war memorials and open air parks open to the public.
“We are prioritizing access to the most accessible and most iconic areas of parks and public lands. Each park, monument, recreation area, etc. will have different plans in place,” the statement added.
As for his part, Zinke says calls the Schumer shutdown a “political miscalculation.”
“It’s frustrating because we’re a better country than this,” Zinke said. “The government should always fund our military and public lands. The Schumer shutdown proves Democrats are willing to risk our security over an unrelated issue to public safety.”
That may be true. However, we can see what a difference an administration makes when it comes to handling such a shutdown.
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