EDITORIAL: Sen. Jacky Rosen’s big flip-flop

It was fewer than two years ago when Sen. Jacky Rosen patted herself on the back for voting to avoid a federal government shutdown. Such a disruption, she insisted in an October 2023 news release, “would have been devastating for our economy.” She went on to say that “Nevadans are sick and tired of this dysfunction” and that keeping Washington operating “will ensure Nevada families and seniors continue to get the food assistance they need, veterans get the services they deserve, and our troops and federal law enforcement get their paychecks on time.”

Whether a government shutdown would have wrought destruction across the Nevada or national landscape is debatable, of course. But what is most remarkable about Sen. Rosen’s comments is that she apparently never meant any of it. It was rank political posturing.

On Friday, 10 Democrats in the Senate — including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto — joined Republicans to pass a continuing resolution, 62-38, that will keep the government running until the end of September. Good for Sen. Cortez Masto, who has previously spoken out against the perils of shutting down the federal government. It took a modicum of courage to buck the vocal progressive wing of her party and stick to her principles.

The same can’t be said of Sen. Rosen, who went with the pack. Those government shutdowns would devastate the Nevada economy? Well, not really. Sen. Rosen was only too eager to close nonessential federal operations — to be part of the “dysfunction” she previously decried and to cut off “food assistance,” veterans services and government checks — if that might be an impediment to President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring fiscal sanity to Washington.

Sen. Rosen may have calculated that, because she is early in her second term, it will be nearly six years before she will again have to face the Nevada electorate if she decides to run again — and that’s plenty of time for memories to fade. Perhaps, but that’s a risky gambit. Sen. Rosen constantly attempts to position herself as a moderate and a supporter of bipartisanship in Washington, but since November, she has done little when it counts to merit such a reputation. Instead, she recently opposed a bill that would have prevented biological men from competing in women’s sports and now aligns herself with those, including radical House Democrats, demanding a government closure to slow Mr. Trump’s hectic pace.

If Sen. Rosen truly believes that a shutdown would devastate Nevada and deprive the needy of “food assistance,” her vote was reckless and callously indifferent. If she instead believes that shutdowns are sometimes necessary to make a political point against the White House, then her vote was an exercise in utter hypocrisy. Either way, it wasn’t her best moment. Nevadans shouldn’t forget.