But Just This Once It’s OK: Government Shutdowns Are Usually A Bad Idea

*Huh. Every time I go to pick a header image, this one just seems to jump out at me.*

The “Government shutdowns in the United States” page on Wikipedia is 20 years old; it’s old enough to able to vote.

In 9 months, it’ll be old enough to legally buy alcohol.

In 5 years, it’ll be old enough to rent a car and get kicked off its editors’ health insurance plans.

In 10 years it’ll be old enough to be President, if we’re still paying attention to any of those rules.

And the entire idea is still as stupid as it’s ever been.

Government shutdowns in the U.S. happen for two reasons:

the Constitution says the government can’t spend money without Congress approving it
Congress mostly passes short-term approvals for spending

It doesn’t have to be this way.

It shouldn’t be this way.

First, Congress should just flat-out be prohibited from any one-off or short-term legislation. Having expiration dates hanging over laws and even the existence of State systems is massively inefficient and makes it really hard to track or predict just what the law or government will be like at any particular date.

What they should have to do is pass a standing budget that will automatically renew each year, then pass adjustments to that budget. This would dramatically simplify the whole process and give it some of the predictability and stability that any sane State should have.

This would also have the massive benefit of allowing tax rates to be automatically calculated based on that budget, which would get Congress out of constantly screwing around with the tax rates.

It’s not this way for any good reason.

Federal spending is managed this way because it enables deceptive marketing about what your personal Congresscritter supports and has achieved and it allows unpopular changes to be delayed or hidden to manage their impact on elections.

It’s really, really useful for all kinds of corruption, so it’s beneficial to the politicians who control the system.

It usually sucks for the rest of us, though.

Government offices are closed, important programs are shuttered.

People don’t get paid; the entire economy slows down.

The press gets all caught up in a “who will the public blame?” frenzy that’s frankly embarrassing to watch.

But this time is different.

All those things are happening too, of course, and they still suck.

But this time the President, in his deranged quest to re-cast himself as a monarch rather than a public servant, is already closing all the parts of the State that make this country worth having anyway.

And, given that his supporters hold majorities in both chambers of Congress and the Supreme Court, forcing as much of a shutdown in that government as possible is a really important way to slow that down.

So, yeah, having a system that allows for regular budgetary shutdowns of the government is generally a bad idea and we really shouldn’t have a system like that. But it is the system we have.