Life

4 Problems That Lead to the Government Shutdown

iStock

Last Updated on February 12, 2022

While both political parties blame each other for the government shutdown, there are several reasons our Congressmen and their constituents think it’s an acceptable answer to the Obamacare problem.

Every time I hear someone say they’re happy the government is shut down, I just shake my head. (That’s #smh in Twitter-speak.)

For many of them, it’s because they don’t like Obamacare, even though most of them who are screaming the loudest about how terrible it is haven’t read all of it — I haven’t read all of it, either, but then I’m neither touting it as the worst thing that happened to our health care system or the best. (And, yes, I am very suspicious of most of the people who assure me they’ve read all 1,900 pages of it, when at least a few of them don’t seem to have enough of an attention span of a gnat.)

For others, however, it’s because they think that shutting down the government, even partially and temporarily, is somehow going to put cash in their pockets, as if they’re pacing outside by their mailboxes waiting for some rebate check to pop up. News flash: they’re going to be waiting for a long time.

Here are four stumbling blocks that have either led people to think the shutdown is a good thing or that the “showdown” tactic that created it is a good strategy:

1. The 27th Amendment

The 27th Amendment to the Constitution was passed with the best of intentions. It was designed to prevent any financial foolishness in Congress with regard to Congressional salaries. Specifically, it specified that if our Congressmen decided to vote themselves a pay raisehow dare they! — such a raise would have to wait until after election day.

That’s a great idea, because it means that the same legislators who vote themselves a pay raise can find themselves out of a job if the electorate decides they don’t deserve the raise they voted for. So there’s at least some motivation to be careful about raising Congressional salaries.

But the way it’s written also makes it a bad idea: the same specification that prevents Congressional salaries from going up until after another election also prevents Congressional salaries from going down. So for Congress to really feel any kind of pain from the shutdown, they’d have to approve their own pay cut, which isn’t likely to happen for obvious reasons, and we’d have to wait until after the next election before it could take effect, anyway.

The congressional salary, at this point, is $174,000. That’s more than I make. I hate to think how many of “me” could be hired for that amount of money.

But because their big checks will keep right on coming, even when working-class government employees more in line with our salaries are facing furloughs, they don’t have the personal stake in a shutdown. It won’t affect them, so they have no reason to worry.

There was a great line in All in the Family decades ago, in an episode about a draft dodger who shows up at Christmas Dinner, who sparks a fight about the Vietnam War. Archie Bunker makes a point about the “old crocks” in Congress who are in a better position than war protesters to decide whether we go to war because they know they won’t be the ones getting killed. The implication is that they’re more likely to be impartial in deciding, since they don’t have a to suit up, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition themselves.

There’s truth to the sentiment. But there’s also an underlying lunacy.

The 27th Amendment needs to be repealed and replaced with a new version that keeps the prevention of any financial funny stuff, but that also includes a new policy: when critical issues like a budget isn’t passed because of an impasse like this, two things immediately happen: first, it’s the legislative branch — and only them — who sees their salaries disappear; and second, no one gets to go home until the work is done. Armed soldiers come in, lock the doors and the senators and representatives stay until they actually do their jobs.

Picture refugees from Hurricane Katrina trapped in the Louisiana Superdome. If that doesn’t inspire our politicians to get over themselves long enough to talk to each other, I don’t know what would.

It won’t keep our politicians from disagreeing with each other, but it might just help them stop storming out of the room rather than sitting back down and talking with one another.

2. The “Better for Now” Argument

A Facebook friend of mine who opposes Obamacare made an interesting point about the efforts to improve our health care system:

“I can’t grasp the “well, at least it’s something” argument… It’s like my son coming home with a D, and me saying “at least it’s not an F!”… It’s still unacceptable.”

Still unacceptable? Certainly.

But here’s the other side of that coin: if you brought home that unacceptable D, your parents wouldn’t have then told you to go back to whatever it was you were doing — or not doing — that got you the F the week before.

A responsible parent would jump in and say, “Okay, this is better than last time. Now we need to continue improving. We want that A.

People who are trying to argue that Obamacare, by virtue of not being the perfect plan to solve every problem in our health care system, are being disingenuous when they argue that it should be defunded; when has any one law ever solved every problem without leading, one way or another, to a new one?

That doesn’t mean we don’t try to improve conditions for our citizens: it means we continue to evolve and address new problems quickly and effectively until we find that “perfect” plan.

Unfortunately, there are too many people who would rather see us not make any improvements until a non-existent “total fix” pops up out of thin air. It makes one wonder why they haven’t created it themselves by now.

3. The Money-Saving Delusion

Americans simply do not understand how their government works. It’s likely not a matter of government being too big so much as most of us being too uninterested.

Unfortunately, this means that when we send our Congressmen to Washington to watch out for our interests so we don’t have to, we assume that a government shutdown simply means that we’ve just closed the checkbook and are saving money while we argue. It’s like a bonus!

I’ve heard several people say something along the lines of, “Well, at least we’re saving tax dollars while we’re waiting.”

But we’re not. In fact, we’re wasting tax dollars while both sides of Congress play out their little disruptive temper tantrum.

I hope you’re sitting down: an economic consulting firm tells NBC News the price tag for the shutdown is somewhere around $12.5 million per hour.

Sure, we’ve cut pay to many government employees during the furlough, but we’ve already had to pay them to come up with contingency plans for a possible shutdown before it was a definite shutdown, and they could have spent that time performing the duties they were actually hired to do. Then there’s the fact that it’s possible that the employees will still be paid for their furlough days once the shutdown is over. So even that savings isn’t necessarily saved.

Then there’s the notion of the timing of the shutdown: there are fears that the negative impact on the economy could injure retail sales over the holiday season, depending, of course, on how long the shutdown lasts. Do we really need another reason for the economy to slow down?

4. The Lack of a GOP ‘Plan B’

Let’s face it: Barack Obama won the 2008 election, in part, because of his promise to reform our health care system.

Now let’s go back in time a bit further: starting with the Republican Revolution of 1994, the GOP held a majority in Congress that continued through the 1996, 1998 and 2000 elections. That’s eight years. And if you will recall, George W. Bush was elected president in 2000.

In those eight years, could the GOP not have come up with their own grand, sweeping health care reform package? And in the eight months before 9/11, could the GOP, with a majority in Congress and a Republican president in the White House, not have passed that plan while frustrated Democrats sat pouting in their seats without even the threat of a government shutdown?

If they had all of the answers and had actually put them on paper to solve our health care ills, Obama wouldn’t have had health care as a platform eight years later. And we wouldn’t be where we are five years after that.

Why, if there is agreement in both parties that our health care system needs to be improved, weren’t we given the chance to vote between two health care reform plans rather than for politicians who were likely support passing one and politicians likely to support not passing the same one?

Is there a GOP plan waiting in the wings to replace Obamacare, or is the key issue just dumping that plan?

The answer to that question should speak volumes.

Your Turn:

How do you feel about the government shutdown? Do you think that your lawmakers are really listening to your concerns?

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.

7 Comments

  • patricksplace TedtheThird Under most circumstances I tend to agree that the market left to itself will handle most stuff pretty well. But I tend to think that there are some things (education, healthcare, others) that don’t fit the laissez faire model all that well. 
    To borrow an example from your world, the Nielsons are a great way to measure television. When you to, as some have, apply them to websites, there are some important differences in reality of the two services (TV versus Internet) that cause the model to not work as well.
    We see the same thin in healthcare. There are certain aspects to it that cause the laissez faire model to not work as well as it does in say manufacturing or retail.

  • TedtheThird Very true, and this was another aspect of our health care problem Republicans could have dealt with the last stretch they had full majority, but didn’t. As a general rule, Republicans want government OUT of the business sector, believing the principle that consumer demand should drive businesses to make the decisions they make rather than having the government step in to regulate. It’s unfortunate that this principle has to apply to health care insurers as well.

  • patricksplace sure thing good post as always. you have a knack for explaining topics in an intelligent way.

  • What I don’t see discussed often (if ever) is the role of Health Insurerers in this mess. 
    For years (yes, even before Obamalama was elected) I could count on every other year my employer having a big meeting and telling us that our because our current insurer was raising rates 15, 20 or 30 percent we were moving to another plan. No explanation was ever given for the increase in rates other than my own speculation that they needed to make more money for stockholders. At the same time, more and more out of pocket expenses were required (High deductible plans, higher co-pays etc).
    Then there were the draconian pre-existing conditions rules. If you went even 1 day without coverage, everything you ever had became a pre-existing condition and no longer covered. It was like they were looking for ways to not live up to their obligations.
    ObamalamaCare might not be the answer, but the Insurance Companies created a big part of this mess themselves with their own decisions.

  • You make some very good points. I’m the first to admit that the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect.  (Personally, I felt it was better before Congress got a hold of it and started making the changes they did so it could be passed, but that’s water under the bridge.)  I cannot understand what would be wrong with allowing the law to be fully enacted and then, when we see how it works, make adjustments to it to make it better! It’s not like we have an alternative, as you pointed out, so we should work with what we have.

  • I think you hit some important points, mainly the public is complacent and it is not just healthcare but in general. How many peo0ple know what is being discussed in Washington besides healthcare? How many people know the names of the their representatives both state and federal? I think too many people get their news in sound bites and any political discussion that is over 5 minutes is BORING!
    Another point you make that I agree with is the Republicans have no alternative plan.
    I was covered by my former employer health insurance plan until yesterday when I went on Medicare, before then I was paying slightly over $300 a month for my insurance and the company paid an equal amount. I went online to see what “Obamacare” would cost me and it was $257 for an equal policy.
    Another thing to consider is that there is a hidden tax we were paying to cover uninsured people’s healthcare. Because hospitals by law must treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay, that cost is passed on to the insured and from one study that I read it adds about $300 to everyone’s insurance premiums.

Comments are closed.