Six aspects of a gov't shutdown
As the intransigence in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., extends the partial government shutdown well into its second week, it invites a few observations:
1. Nobody in Congress or the administration is coming off very well in this dispute (although this is not exactly a surprise).
Indeed, a recent poll finds 62 percent of people blame Republicans while half think President Obama or Democrats are responsible for the embarrassing stalemate. Favorability ratings for House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are at a laughable 18 percent. Yet four in five people polled have felt no personal effect (yet) from the shutdown.
2. Members of Congress probably ought to be furloughed as well. They don’t seem to be getting anywhere — except more deeply entrenched in polarized positions — so why are we paying plenty of money for them to dither and digress? Our representatives should be taking the hit for their inability to run our country.
3. Speaking of pay, should we really give in to Congress’ guilt trip and OK back pay for the thousands of federal workers put out of work by the shutdown?
While we sympathize with the plight of federal workers, the concept of being paid when you’re not working isn’t merely un-American, it’s simply wrong and unfair.
The argument behind the back-pay movement is that “It’s not the fault of the workers.”
That’s true. They are pawns in a high-stakes political cage match. But they’re not working, either.
In the private sector, if a company furloughs workers or trims their hours or lays them off, they don’t get paid, generally, for time they don’t work. And all those management decisions are not the workers’ fault either.
During the recent recession, millions of Americans lost work time and they didn’t have Congress giving them money for their lost time. Their recourse was to seek unemployment benefits — an option available to furloughed federal employees now.
4. Meanwhile, the National Park Service is doing a bang-up job of getting bad press across the country and not winning over federal government fans.
It started with a public relations nightmare when rangers barricaded the open-plaza World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to prevent Honor Flight veterans from visiting the memorial. Then this week, illegal aliens were allowed to demonstrate on the “closed” National Mall.
There’s much more, with stories about a federally owned parking lot being closed at privately owned Mount Vernon. Barricades were set up on roads around Mount Rushmore to prevent people from viewing the monument. The same thing happened on a state highway running through the Grand Canyon, where two dozen people have been cited for entering the park.
These are just a few examples of how a federal bureaucracy has been commandeered by the administration to make things as difficult as possible for the public, probably with the misguided intent of creating animosity towards Republicans in the shutdown stalemate.
If that was the plan, we think it’s backfiring in a big way.
5. The longer this goes on, the worse it’s likely to get for everyone from veterans (who stand to lose disability compensation) to a variety of users of government services to all of us if the D.C. dilemma leads to a further national debt crisis.
6. It sure looks like a beautiful time to visit Glacier National Park. Too bad we can’t. Let’s hope this crazy crisis gets resolved soon.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.