Oct.01

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

The Government Is Shut Down

There was a last-minute push to get some sort of can-kicking resolution through the Senate before 11:59 p.m. last night, but it failed, with the last, best hope getting all the Republican votes, but just three non-Republican votes (John Fetterman, D-PA; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-NV and Angus King, I-ME). That's not enough to overcome a filibuster, of course, and so the government "closed down" at 12:00:01 a.m.

We put "closed down" in quotations for two reasons. The first is that most federal employees will be required to report to work today (generally without pay) to execute an "orderly" shutdown. The second is that significant parts of the government will actually keep operating. There are some portions of the government that are funded through sources other than the annual budget, so those aren't affected. Further, under several bills passed by Congress, "essential" services continue (again, usually without pay). And it's basically left to the various agencies to decide what is "essential."

The upshot is that the following will still be operating largely normally, although some people might not get any pay during the shutdown. After the shutdown ends, they will get the back pay they missed:

• Most of the White House staff
• Congress
• The U.S. Postal Service
• The National Parks
• The Military
• Social Security and Medicare payments
• The TSA and air traffic controllers
• Border enforcement
• Embassies
• The National Weather Service

And these entities will function as normal for now, though they may shut down partly or wholly as existing cash reserves run out:

• Federal courts
• The IRS
• FEMA
• SNAP
• The Smithsonian Institution

These lists are obviously not exhaustive; we just picked things we thought would be of particular interest. For readers who want more of the nitty-gritty, here is a summary of the plans that have been announced by various agencies (though not all agencies have made an announcement yet).

It should be noted that the reality of the shutdown is more complicated than can be communicated in a list or a chart. To start, decisions made this week could be changed next week, or the week thereafter. On top of that, nobody can know what the impact of employees calling in sick en masse will be, or what will happen if the White House goes through with the mass firings it has threatened. And finally, just because something is not shut down does not mean it's entirely open, either. For example, people will get their Social Security payments, but if they have a question or a problem, a resolution may have to wait a good, long time. Similarly, the parks will be open, but they reportedly won't be staffed. During the last shutdown, the lack of staffing led to all kinds of bad behavior from park patrons—littering, vandalism, etc.—such that a group of former park directors asked the Trump administration to shut the parks entirely this time, rather than leave them open but unstaffed.

We wrote yesterday that once the government has been shut down for even a single second, a very big line has been crossed. Another one will be crossed relatively soon. If Congress can hammer something out today, or tomorrow, then the government won't really shut down in a meaningful way, and this incident will join the other seven shutdowns that lasted 5 days or less; remembered only so the list of shutdowns is comprehensive.

But if there's no resolution by Monday or so, then another very big line will be crossed, as the possibility of a brief, non-impactful shutdown will be gone. The seven "brief" shutdowns lasted 4 hours (twice), 1 day (twice), 3 days (twice) and 5 days. The next shortest shutdown after those, however, was a 16-day shutdown during the administration of Barack Obama. There have also been shutdowns of 21 and 35 days, the latter coming during the first Trump administration, when the Republicans also had the trifecta.

This means that the Senate may attempt to do some negotiating today and tomorrow, and may make another attempt or two to work things out. But if that fails, then it will be time for the blame game and lots of finger-pointing. Figuring out which party will get the blame (or, at least, more of the blame) is interesting from a horse-race angle, at least for the sorts of people who write and/or read this site. However, the more important thing is that if one party or another thinks that they are going to be the one to take a hit, that party will suddenly become much more amenable to compromise.

There has been a little bit of polling so far, and here are the early numbers:

As you can see, the Democrats would appear to be in the better position out of the gate. And the news actually gets worse for the Republicans, because Democratic loyalists basically all blame Republicans, and Republican loyalists basically all blame Democrats. So, the Democrats' "lead" is primarily because independents (aka swing voters) blame Republicans twice as frequently as they blame Democrats.

There are a few other things we'll throw out there, that might help round out the picture:

• Democrats' Other Issue: The official reason the Democrats are drawing a line in the sand (beyond the fact that Democratic voters want to see some fight) is to protect healthcare subsidies. And this isn't a lie; they really do want to rescue the subsidies. However, their other issue, which is apparently just as important to the Democratic members, is recission. They think that any agreement that does not address this problem is worthless, as the White House can just yank the rug out from under the blue team once a deal is approved by Congress. The linked article does not say, but we would guess the reason that Democrats aren't talking about this more is that it's kind of wonky and inside baseball.
  
  
• Republicans Divided?: Meanwhile, some Republicans, among them Trump, are at least somewhat amenable to the idea of saving the healthcare subsidies. They undoubtedly know that voters who lose their health insurance tend to be angry voters, and angry voters tend to be "throw the bums out" voters. This suggests that the Republicans aren't as unified as they would have the world believe, and that there may be room for a compromise on the Democrats' terms.
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part I: The White House is cranking up the messaging to 11. Most or all federal employees have received an e-mail from the White House explaining that the Democrats are to blame for everything. The problem here is that federal employees know how the government works, and they are paying attention. They will reach whatever conclusions they are going to reach, and are not likely to be influenced by a mass e-mail written by a White House intern (or maybe by Stephen Miller).
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part II: The administration has also posted messages to many departmental websites, for anyone who happens to surf by. Here's the one from HUD:
  
  
  
  Maybe this will convince some people. But maybe not. This is 1940s-style over-the-top, it reads like a World War II propaganda poster. The modern citizen tends to be leery of that kind of hamfistedness. We would suggest a lighter touch was called for.
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part III: The White House is also trying to spin polling data as "proof" the Democrats are wrong here. Consider, for example, this press release, which quotes the NYT poll linked above, and is headlined "POLL: Most Americans Say NO As Radical Left Drives Democrat Shutdown." The release, as the headline suggests, points out that the majority of Americans do not want a shutdown, and presents as fact that this will be very bad for the blue team. The former part is true; the latter part is a very big assumption currently unsupported by evidence. Meanwhile, the use of phrases like "deranged, Radical Left base" is a variant of the problem outlined in the previous item on this list.
  
  In general, when a presidential administration is confident in its position, it does not feel the need to crank up the spin operation. That the White House is not only getting an early start on the spin, but is spinning so very hard, may be instructive. At very least, it does not give hope Trump will be in a compromising mood anytime soon.

And now... we wait. Trump is already the record-holder for most days of shutdown for a president. Now, if he really wants to, he can put that out of reach for all time, like Pete Rose's 4,256 hits, or Tom Brady's 89,214 passing yards. (Z)