Shutdown: A View from the Bottom

I guess it’s a pretty serious thing, this government shutdown.  After months of debate (or has it been years?) a final impasse has been reached and all of the federal bureaucracy, the House, Senate and Executive branches, the Supreme Court and lots of things I can’t remember have come to a halt.  The national parks are closed, the military is on furlough and PBS has no money to broadcast.  And what about the post offices and OSHA and the EPA and the IRS?  Closed as well, I suppose.  But as kids today say:  “Not!”

My political position has been discussed in previous blogs.  I’m not registered in either major party.  I’m not a libertarian or socialist or Whig or even a Bull Mooser.  But I am registered to vote and I exercise my civic privilege whenever any election comes along.  My tendency is always to vote against incumbents.  I’m a big proponent of giving someone else a chance to try and bring some common sense to the business of governing at all levels.  Term limits seem like a common sense idea as well.

The monstrosity that is the federal bureaucracy rolls along even while the folks who supposedly control the thing declare it closed.  The election last year re-endorsed the current administration at the same time that a bunch of legislators were put into office on the promise that they’d try to slow down the progressive agenda.  Seems like both constituencies are being well served. 

It’s a complex thing, governing a nation of over three hundred million people.  In some ways it seems impossible.  Here in Delaware we have a population of just over nine hundred thousand stuffed into three counties.  As small as we are there is still plenty of difficulty in getting anything useful done by the government.  And we are pretty much run by one party, a party that fully buys into every federal program that plops down from the folks in Washington.

Our unemployment rate is up close to eight percent and we have a pretty large public assistance program as well.  In our state the number of government employees (including state, federal, county and city) is three times larger than the DuPont Company, our largest corporate entity.  To me that is a scary number.  When the taxes are collected to fund this huge number of government employees, and the seemingly never-shrinking public assistance programs, we have to be at least a little bit worried about how those taxes will affect the economy of our state.  It’s not looking too spiffy right now.

But back to the shutdown.  The television and other news media love to sound the alarm about closing the government.  Politicians love to stir things up even more, declaring that their opposite numbers are holding the American people hostage (or some such crap) or threatening the very stability of democracy and the safety of the free world.  I’m not so sure about all that.  Even these moronic politicians seem to know enough to keep the military and basic services going.  But they sure do have a problem devising and adopting a basic balanced budget without fudging the federal deficit.  I’ve been trying to recall a single truly balanced federal budget in my lifetime.  Bill Clinton claims to have had one but as I recall that was largely the work of the House of Representatives under Newt Gingrich.  However that budget consisted mostly of long term projections regarding deficit reductions.  Do you see how easy it is to make the numbers serve your own cause?

Of course balancing a government budget is just accounting trickery and is not at all like running a real business.  Government operating is far removed from running a real business and yet the people in control of our government, and their supporters, keep wanting more and more of the functions of real business under direct governmental control.  That’s another thing I can’t understand.  When we look at the track record of government programs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Farm Subsidy Programs, SEC, NSA, IRS etc.) then we just might want to reconsider giving those folks more control.

Well, that’s enough about this.  I’m disappointed that some compromises couldn’t be reached but not at all surprised.  The folks in control in the Executive Branch and the Senate have no real good reason to check with the electorate about programs involving health care and such.  After all they won the election and they are a fairly arrogant bunch who think they know what’s good for you and me.  And they’ll continue to chip away at our freedom to make our own decisions.  But, friends, there are more elections to come (at least we hope so) and we’ll have the opportunity to make ourselves heard once again.  Of course that doesn’t mean fifty-one percent of our neighbors will agree with us, does it?

Enjoy the shutdown.  They probably won’t be taking any money from you for a few days, right?  Want to bet?  Have a fine day.