We are now 30-plus days into the latest federal government shutdown, and it is time every taxpayer and voter should ask themselves and their elected U.S. representative and senator, “Is it really worth it?”
After all, there is so much dramatic political theater being played out every day before our very eyes on round-the-clock news channels and social media, with everyone asking if the shutdown is good or bad for the Democrats or the Republicans, especially with state elections that recently took place in Virginia and New Jersey.
That is the wrong question. The right question has more important facets to it: Has it been proven that government shutdowns save significant amounts of taxpayer spending on federal programs without destroying the basic efficacy of the federal programs that work and can be considered essential to our nation’s health, safety and protection?
Sadly, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and various other agencies, past shutdowns have not saved significant amounts of spending or reduced burgeoning deficits.
Federal workers are now guaranteed back pay they did not receive during any shutdown. Any critical area of spending deemed an entitlement, such as Social Security benefits or Medicare, Medicaid or veterans benefits, generally operates on autopilot with its own computer systems and databases, so there are no reductions in spending there to begin with.
The best way to avoid such shutdown kabuki dances in the future is, of course, to elect responsible elected officials who will put a priority on reducing spending first in existing programs.
What is the best way to end shutdowns? Floating the concept of “the nuclear option” once again to kill the Senate filibuster is perhaps the quickest way to end our democratic republican form of government. The filibuster is one of the very few ways left for a minority party or political interest to protect their rights to participate in any debate and/or viable compromise. Abolish the filibuster and we will have two houses of representatives where the majority rules no matter what, and anyone with differing minority opinions might as well go home and hope the next intervening elections swing their way so they can have something to do again in Washington, D.C.
The most direct way to end a federal shutdown occurred in 1995 when a stalemate between President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress ended pretty soon after Clinton cleverly allowed federal monuments such as the Washington Monument to stay open but all the public restrooms nearby to be closed.
According to friends who worked in the Senate office buildings closest to the Monument, within minutes, they heard what sounded like a herd of elephants storming the Russell and Dirksen Senate office buildings with hundreds of very angry and disturbed tourists looking for the nearest open public restroom. They had heard that many Senate offices had private facilities for the elected official and demanded to be able to use that bathroom since they were paying for it with their taxes.
Clever pundits may have called it “Storming the Bathrooms,” but I don’t recall seeing it in print. The Storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, during the French Revolution by hundreds of angry citizens might have been comparable to this herd of angry Americans desperate to find a bathroom.
The clamor of shoes bounced off the hard marble floors of those classical buildings, and loud voices under stress echoed up and down long hallways.
It wasn’t too long after that House and Senate members on both sides of the aisle worked out a suitable compromise with the White House to end the shutdown and move on to a regular order of business again. After all, who wanted to risk a riot by an angry mob to keep public facilities closed when everyone knew it wouldn’t achieve very much in the first place?
The responsible thing to do is for Congress and President Donald Trump to find ways to shave off a few percentage points of growth to federal spending each year until tax revenue can grow to cover current spending annually and produce balanced budgets. Then our representatives and senators won’t be tempted to engage in sideshows like these too-frequent “shutdowns,” which wind up accomplishing very little in their aftermath.
“Storming the Bathrooms of Capitol Hill” doesn’t sound like a very good way to conduct our nation’s business. It worked in 1995 but would be an embarrassing way for the world’s oldest living democratic republic to operate on a regular basis.
