Washington is reaching a consensus: the government will shut down in 10 days — and Republicans will bear the brunt of voter disgust over it.
With House GOP leadership on Wednesday again showing little progress in moving a stopgap funding bill to prevent a shutdown, officials have begun a two-pronged effort to prepare for a shutdown that seems less avoidable every day.
There is the official side of government, where the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget has been working with agencies to make contingency plans for when funding runs out. And there is the political arena, where party operatives are focused on a different goal: inflicting maximum pain on their Republican adversaries and seeking to pin them with blame for an interruption in federal services and paychecks for government workers.
While both sides will inevitably throw blame at the other, Republicans are feeling a keen sense of apprehension that their party will suffer badly should a shutdown transpire.
“We always get the blame,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior appropriator. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.”
I don’t understand. If your government can shut down without the country falling apart… what are you actually paying em for?
Do you think the government’s primary function is to operate a laser that keeps the sun from crashing into the country? You see, a community of people come together and say they could do things more efficiently and have a better life if they all cooperate, so they form a “government” and that government does things for the benefit of those people. In a shutdown, some of those things are deemed essentially and keep happening, like law enforcement and coast guard and border patrol and food inspection and air traffic control. The people doing those jobs just don’t get paid! Hooray!
Other things stop working, like FCC complaints, or social security checks, or the IRS help line, or parks, and certain people that help with criminal investigations, or the building of semiconductor plants intended to help the US compete with China, or visa applications, or school lunches for students, or the collection of statistical reports on the US economy that busiensses rely on, and so on. When these things don’t happen, life for Americans gets worse. You are quite correct that the country will not immediately burst into flames. All that will happen is that millions of people will suffer! What do we even pay the government for, amiright guys?!
It creates stunning damage, that would indeed lead to the country falling apart. The only reason we weather them is basically “you always stop this shit soonish, so we can just rob peter to pay paul for a bit with debt for the really important things.”
An actual, no shit goverment shutdown because they literally have no money and no debt would shatter our nation.
If you can go a few days without food and not die, that means you don’t need to eat at all. Obviously.
