Happy Monday everyone!! As usual, Monday’s post is by Stephen Hall. Thanks, Stephen!
With the current government shutdown, just one of many over the years, one wonders at the history of government shutdowns and why such shutdowns always appear to be a political disaster for Republicans, a win for Democrats, yet continue to happen on a regular basis, and why this one might just be different.
Note that they keep saying a partial government shutdown, not an actual government shutdown, and what exactly that means. Only in government would continuing 75% of operations and payments be called a “shutdown” as the overwhelming majority of governmental services and projects continue unabated as the funding for those operations has already been appropriated.
Ever notice that all of the shutdowns usually occur around the end of the year, December and January? Yet the federal government’s fiscal year runs from October through September, not on a calendar year basis.
As in all things political, follow the money.
It matters what small fraction of the government is actually being affected in a shutdown, not merely the convenient phrasing of “non-essential” personnel or “non-essential” services. The main brunt of the furloughs come from the Commerce, Defense Department (primarily civilian staff), Health and Human Services, and Transportation departments, with a few scattered among some other minor agencies. https://dmlnews.com/list-federal-agencies-affected-government-shutdown/
Notice that these are traditionally those federal departments whose employees lean most heavily conservative. I don’t imagine that is by accident. It is not the welfare checks and social security checks which stop during a government shutdown; it is not payments for students or healthcare; it is not the “social” spending excesses of the government largess which are affected.
This is not by accident but by design. Shutdowns are designed to be a political attack against one political ideology by cutting off the flow of money to those viewed as supporting the wrong side of history. The shutdowns are carefully contrived to only affect one side of the political aisle.
While those government employees receive a temporary suspension of their income, unlike layoffs and furloughs in the private sector, they will receive full back pay for their temporary hardship. This makes it difficult for those in the private sector to have much sympathy for the government employee hardships because those hardships are so much lighter than their private contemporaries.
However, mild suffering is still suffering, and it has the designed effect to drive a wedge between those more conservative public employees and the conservative political interests, making the left appear more compassionate because they are always the ones seen wanting to end the shutdowns.
Most of this perception is, of course, concocted by the media narrative by doing what the media does best, finger pointing. Most people have but a superficial and cursory view of politics so the news broadcasts all pointing at the conservatives being responsible resonates and places the blame upon them.
It’s a lot like a couple breaking up in high school and all the girls getting together to blame the guy because all the other guys in school really couldn’t care less. Blame in a government shutdown only matters so a certain sector of the electorate, those who feign compassion for those affected, while most people going about their daily lives remain indifferent because it has no effect on them whatsoever.
Most people really haven’t noticed that a small fraction of the government is shutdown, and would be completely unaware of it but for the media attention.
The Democrats are used to this simple waiting game while their catty girlfriends in the media blame the Republicans for the breakup they bask in the glow of being the hurt victim abused by their mean Republican boyfriend.
Well, what might make this shutdown different than the dozens which have come before? Several factors combine to make this one a little different. Will it be sufficiently different to actually lead to a different final result? That is still too early to tell.
However, this time, one of the groups of people affected by the shutdown are the TSA workers. Being “security” workers, the liberals expected them to be just another primarily conservative constituency, but being primarily low skilled, low paid workers with a high turnover rate, most of the TSA workers are actually on the liberal side of the political slate. For the first time one of the affected constituencies are on the other side causing some political pressure for the Democrats.
Additionally, unlike other shutdowns, the roles regarding spending are reversed. The government has not been shutdown because of a conservative desire to spend less money, but because of a populist President wanting to spend more money. Government shutdowns in the past have been about borrowing and spending less, this one is about spending more.
It is a unique position the Democrats find themselves in to say that they don’t want to spend money, and that they are willing to not spend money (shutdown the government) in order to not spend money. They don’t even have the argument that they can’t afford it because of their long history of always wanting to spend more money.
It’s like having a profligate wife complain that she won’t go shopping just because it is for her husband and not something for herself. Democrats come across as being extremely petty and self-serving, whereas in the past they could pretend to be holding out for the benefit of spending more money for the “public”, which was merely government workers but it sounded better.
Finally, there is the matter of the sheer magnitude of the requested funds, or rather the trivial size of the request. Requested funding for “the wall” is only about $5 to $5.7 billion not the full $25 billion which the entire wall is estimated to run, but just a fifth of the total cost. That places the requested funds as about 0.13% of the total budget about 1/8 of one percent of the total $4.4 trillion budget.
The problem for the Democrats? (And it is obviously by design.) This request is less money than the US gives to Mexico in charity, make that “foreign aid”. https://www.patriotpollalerts.com/end-foreign-aid-mexico/ For outward political appearances, the Democrats are willing to shut down the government for less money than they are willing to throw away by just giving money to a foreign power, that very foreign power who is exporting their criminals to us.
What are the Democrats left with to justify refusing such a small pittance? President Trump has metaphorically placed himself as Oliver asking the orphanage, “Please, sir, can I have some more?” Moreover, he is seen as asking for that little bit more standing in for the American people. And they are obligingly picking up the part of the mean tyrannical orphanage master denying such as small bit a gruel for the American people. (Just look at the faces of Pelosi and Schumer in their rebuttal to the President’s speech.)
Regardless of how one feels about the issue and the effectiveness of a border security fence, the political image is a disaster for the Democrats.
So with what are the Democrats left? Since they can’t argue that it’s too much money, they can’t argue that they don’t like spending money, they can’t even argue that they haven’t offered to spend five times as much previously (without pointing out that it was all the amnesty strings attached to the previous offer which they were really pushing).
They are left with arguing that they will not fund it because . . . it’s Trump. They are left arguing that a wall won’t work so it is useless spending, not like that maglift train in California.
Democrats have gotten so complacent winning these wars of spending attrition that they are now just “phoning it in” and not even trying. Instead, they are seen vacationing, laughing at the Republicans, and telling the American people “let them eat cake.”
The Democrats may still win this war of attrition and get the Republicans to cave like every time before, but the political dynamics are not the same this time, and they just might end up with egg on their face.
