What is he supposed to do? Step forward and say "Guys, we are the majority. We have to PASS bills." ???

It's so easy to project power by wielding a big fat No that the Tea Party has forgotten that they have responsibility now.

Just wait for it how the Republicans will try to spin this in 2016.
"Government doesn't work! Remember the last 2 years? Nothing got done! Something needs to change! And to change things, we need to keep the republican majority!"

I would not have approved originally either. The point is these "Essential employees" will be required to work...and promised pay...once it is resolved. Our US House is going to abuse these employees.

By the way....most of these departments operated long before the DHS. Are you saying we should have no US Secret Service? No US Coast Guard? No Customs?

I'm actually impacted a lot by these agencies most notably the US Coast Guard, the TSA, and Customs. I fly a lot (matter of fact I'm flying 2/25 and 2/27 this month.) If they reduce staff can imagine what the lines at Atlanta Hartsfield will be like? Or Customs when I fly into Miami or Ft. Lauderdale from working in the Caribbean?

And my company relies on the US Coast Guard for lots of permits for our work. If that slows down it will really impact our business.

That is the case with almost all of the opposition to this President. They can't be having a black man be successful as a President, it might encourage other non-whites to take a stab at running. We've already seen that the majority of Americans are fine with having a Black President so all the boehners of this world have is obstruction and hate.
The door has been opened and opened wide. I hope that for the rest of my life we see anyone except rich white dudes in the oval office. After all they've made a mess of things now haven't they?

For instance, if pay "stops" on 27 February it won't be noticed until potentially the March 19th paycheck.

They will still get a full paycheck on March 5th for the February 8th-21st pay period.

My point is people don't immediately stop getting paid, it would take 2-3 weeks to cycle around. If the shutdown lasts a week it won't even be noticed because they always pay both essential and non-essential personnel for the shutdown period anyway once funding is approved, whether they were actually at work or not.

The repubs should be rounded up and thrown in the Capitol basement jail cells.

Won't this allow more of those evil illegals get into our country along with the terrorists?

but most people seem to be brushing it off right now.

I can see the Repubs being incompetent/negligent/complicit enough (choose as appropriate) to let something happen.

And if they let something slip by that comes to frution a few months down the line, it'll be too late to blame anyone.

Paint that everywhere.

they go back to being separate. Secret Service goes back the Treasury Department where it used to be.

Homeland Security was a Bush creation and is a bloated agency, sucking up dollars.

If the agencies already in existence pre-9/11 (some of which you've listed above) had worked cooperatively and especially if the FBI and its then chief Louis Freeh had been less focused on Clinton's pants and more on the alerts about people seeking flying lessons but not wanting to learn how to take off and land, 9/11 may have been averted.

Think back to the US embassy bombings in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) in 1998. No one in the repuke Congress gave a damn because most of the people killed were Africans (black Africans!). Then, in 2000, there was the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen (don't forget a 9/11 hijacker was from Yemen, too), but nothing was done because it was in October, election season. Clinton would have been ridiculed had he tried to do anything, and again, the repuke Congress didn't care!

When Bush was installed by SCOTUS, the outgoing Clinton administration warned about terror, based on the attacks I have cited above and much more. But the Bushies didn't care; they were fixated on their PNAC plan. They ignored warnings (recall the August 6th memo) and even before then, they ignored the fact that airspace around the site of the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy in July 2001 had been closed because of the threat of airplanes being used as missiles against the buildings housing the world leaders in attendance.

Then 9/11 happened (or was allowed to happen) because it served the PNACers' purposes, one of which was invading Iraq! It also enabled creation of a new and redundant agency that takes money from social programs, lines the pockets of security corporations and their CEOS (e.g Michael Chertoff) and really does little that the DOJ, DOD and FBI weren't already doing. Are we better off because of the Dept. of Homeland (how Nazi-esque) Security or is travel just much more onerous.

I loathe repukes, but a broken clock is right twice a day and this seemingly misguided defunding may not be a disaster.

I agree it is bloated. But the way they are going about de-funding is not the way to do.