Shutdown produced no good result; nor will another one

Susan Collins is a Maine Republican U.S. senator who — it’s safe to assume — is no friend of Donald J. Trump.

So she said today that the partial government shutdown that the president said he would be proud to own produced “absolutely nothing.” Collins is as correct as she possibly can be.

The only thing it produced was heartache and hassle among many of the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who were furloughed or forced to work without pay for 35 days.

The shutdown ended with no money for The Wall that Trump wants to build. It reopened the entire government for three weeks. Both sides have until Feb. 15 to work out a longer-term budget deal that contains money for “border security.” Democrats don’t want The Wall. Trump insists on it. He might declare a national emergency if the deal lacks money to build it along our southern border.

There had better not be another shutdown. The longest such idiocy produced nothing of substance, as Sen. Collins has noted. Neither would the next one.

This is no way in the world to make America great again. It instead has made us an international laughingstock.