ESSAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND- Partial Government Shutdown

PARTIAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

 

“No man should be in public office who can’t make more money in private life.”

Thomas E. Dewey

 

If you are conservative in your political outlook, you tend to believe:

• “The best government is that which governs least;”
• In a strong national defense;
• That maybe mankind is not the primary cause of climate change;
• That even though our health care system needs improvement is a Obummercare is both a travesty and a disaster;
• The first step in both immigration reform and national defense is securing our porous borders;
• Even though the welfare state has grown way to expansive, the government must keep its commitments to its own people.

 

We repeatedly are being told, just like with the sequester, much more shrilly with each passing day, that a government shutdown is irrational and a disaster for the entire country.

 

Is the sky falling?

 

Did anybody notice the sequester after it happened? The basic effects have been a real reduction in the federal deficit – for which Obama is now taking credit after fighting the sequester tooth and nail – and a degradation of our military readiness, which nobody is talking about any more. Oh yes, and suspension of White House tours.

 

So with this shut down:

• The active duty military will continue to get paid; we still have a strong national defense;
• The TSA and air traffic controllers still go to work; our skies are still safe (sort of, at least as safe as last week);
• The Border Patrol will continue to work; or borders are secured (sort of, at least as secure as last week);
• The Post Office still delivers mail; the mail must go through rain sleet and hail;
• Social Security checks still get paid to retirees, and participants will still receive Medicare and Medicaid benefits;
• Huge numbers of employees of the EPA and the National Weather Service are furloughed; all the researchers on climate change and enforcement  personnel of new EPA regulations on “carbon” as a pollutant (contrary to the enabling legislation of that agency) will be sent home, but storm tracking will continue (do you care about the rest?);
• National Parks will be closed (take that, Mr. Griswold);
• “We” (the US of A) will look “horrible” and “dsyfunctional” to the world;
• 800,000 “Non-essential” government personnel will be “furloughed;”
• The fight to preserve patient centered health care from regulation driven health care will continue.

 

The most directly affected people will be “non-essential” government employees. This is an undeniable personal tragedy for them: they lose their job and their families will suffer. However, ho is that different from factory workers who temporarily lose their jobs because of a recession caused by federal government policies and failures? Are non-essential government employees exempt from the consequences of bad government polices and failures, while everyday private citizens are not? Should we have more sympathy for them than the private sector families whose full time jobs with health insurance coverage will suddenly be transformed into part-time jobs without health coverage insurance and a 25% pay cut because of Obamacare? I don’t think so. More importantly for the country at large, you should ask yourself: if these positions are non-essential, what is the government doing by hiring them in the first place? Why is the American taxpayer supporting a huge federal deficit to pay for, on a day in, day out, month after month, year after year basis, 800,000 “jobs” which are “non-essential?” Isn’t that the definition of a government that is too big?

 

When my own health care is on the line, do I give a rat’s ass what the French or the Israelis or the Brazilians think of us? Besides, we are dysfunctional. Always have been – the “messiness” of American democracy is legendary.

 

So, this shutdown will temporarily cause government to be smaller, the deficit will be reduced, national defense and the post office will continue, retirement checks will continue to be cut, the EPA will be reined in from activity it shouldn’t be doing in the first place,  I won’t be able to go to Yellowstone Park this month, and people in other countries will ridicule us.

 

What is the downside here?

 

Let me see, am I willing to trade my national park vacation (in October??) to preserve patient centered healthcare, and in the process trim the federal government?

 

Hmmm… Yeah, I’ll take that trade all day long.

 

The Senate and the President are willing to partially shutdown the government because the Senate and President will not agree to impose Obummercare on themselves? Maybe this “crisis” will highlight to the somnolent American voter that Capitol Hill has exempted itself from the glories of Obamacare while forcing the rest of us into it. The Senate and the President will not delay the individual mandate while they have granted over 1,200 exemptions to favored corporations - at a time when the list of major private health care insurance companies declining the “opportunity” to offer insurance under the Obamacare regulations reads like a “who’s who “of the industry? These are the very companies who really understand the risks and costs of the provisions of this health care law, and they are saying “no.” Ata time when hundreds (thousands?) companies who have studied the effects of Obamacare on their bottom lines are dropping spouse coverage like a proverbial hot potato and changing millions of full-time jobs into part time jobs because of the expense of the “Affordable Care Act”?

 

Fine. Shut’er down.