Steve's Blog

Is the government really going to shut down in a couple days? And if so who’s to blame? And will Social Security checks still go out? And will our soldiers facing hostile forces like the Taliban in Afghanistan still get paid? And if it snows, will my street still get cleared? WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN?

Well first of all, if it snows, Washington isn’t involved in clearing streets, so that should continue to be handled as efficiently (or inefficiently, as the case may be) by local governmental entities. As for the other questions: not sure, it depends, yes, and yes.

And for what it’s worth, here’s how we got into this mess. Every year, Congress is supposed to pass twelve appropriations bills, by September 30th, to determine how your hard-earned tax dollars get spent. Seldom do all twelve get passed by either house of Congress by that date, and almost never by both houses. Five of the twelve spending bills HAVE passed both houses and been signed into law by the President this time around. The remaining seven have until this Friday, December 21st, at midnight to be passed by Congress and signed by the President, or the government shuts down. Well, actually only part of the government, those parts covered by the seven non-passed bills, get shut down. “Essential” personnel still come to work; “non-essential” personnel stay home (and will end up getting paid anyway for not working.) Got it?

I know, it sounds ridiculous. And it’s not like we haven’t seen this scenario play out time and time again over the years. The principal sticking point this time around is that President Trump is frustrated that Democrats in the Senate have said they’ll only go along with $1.3 billion for border security/a wall, and the President wants $5 billion. This is less than 1% of the total spending in the bill, so it seems absurd that some reasonable compromise can’t be reached by the deadline this Friday. That’s what I would like to see happen, but we’ll know soon enough.

How can Democrats block the border security funding if they are a minority in the Senate? It’s the stupid Senate Rule that allows filibustering to block a vote unless 60 senators agree it’s time to stop talking and actually hold a vote. STUPID, STUPID RULE.

One final point. There’s always considerable attention paid to who will get the blame for a shutdown – because that’s generally the side that blinks, and gets less of what it wanted in the first place. Having seen a number of these situations play out over my more than two decades in Congress, here are my thoughts. Republicans usually get the blame, because the public instinctively knows that Democrats are the party of government, and therefore logically ought to be less inclined to want to shut it down. And in the past, Republicans (Newt Gingrich particularly comes to mind) have boasted they’d be willing to shut the government down to secure some worthy goal (a balanced budget back in the 1990’s.)

President Trump pretty much did that in his meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer at the White House recently. His exact quote was “I’ll be the one to shut it down. I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”

This is in stark contrast to where we were about a year ago, when the government last shut down, in what is often referred to as the “Schumer Shutdown.” Back then it was Chuck Schumer boasting he was willing to shut the government down unless hundreds of thousands of DACA folks/dreamers/illegal aliens were legalized. After three days of bad publicity, Schumer and the Democrats caved, the government reopened, government workers who hadn’t worked got paid, and it was mostly back to business as usual.

Well, here we are again. Let’s hope that reasonable minds can get together and do what’s logical. But don’t hold your breath.