A week ago, Congress left town for the Presidents’ Day recess (another recess!) after funding most of the government except the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE).

The reason: An impasse over ICE’s operations, following developments in Minneapolis as well as other cities. As always, this issue devolved into the blame game: Democrats said Republicans are putting the nation at risk by refusing reasonable changes to ICE’s behavior, while Republicans faulted Democrats for being unreasonable themselves by their willingness to shut down DHS, even though ICE already has $75 billion, and the Department also includes other important agencies like the Coast Guard, FEMA (disaster relief), and TSA (screeners and air traffic controllers), meaning air travel will be affected.

Forget about who’s right or wrong. The bigger issue is that shutdowns may become the new normal. The longest one in history (43 days) happened just at the end of last year, and here we are again, even though this is a “mini” version affecting only one agency.

The point is that shutdowns, which hurt everyone, seem to have become the new bargaining chip in DC, which is a very dangerous development. This is not a poker game; it’s our country.