Though still treated to more juvenile demonizing in the press and the social media there is more to this shutdown than we usually hear. Some other perspectives follow. This is a bit of a summary of what I have posted on the subject in the past week, but it may be useful to those who want a more concise, different view.
From Charlie Cooke at The National Review, Government Shutdowns: A History;
The frequency with which America has previously reached this point betrays another inconvenient truth: the willingness to shut down the federal Leviathan is by no means limited to the advocates of small government. As my colleague Andrew Stiles notes today, during the supposedly bipartisan wonder years of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill — which are typically rolled out by revisionists to demonstrate what can happen if we all just “work together” — the government shut down no fewer than eight times, mostly at O’Neill’s insistence. Likewise, during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, which are fondly remembered as a time of solid economic growth and bipartisan achievement, the government was sent home twice — on both occasions after Clinton rejected the budget.
Overall, the statistics might surprise: Of the 17 shutdowns in America’s history, Democrats controlled the House during 15 and had charge of both chambers during eight. Five shutdowns happened under unified government!
From Daniel Greenfield in his blog, Sultan Knish, The Sun Sets on Washington D.C. ;
Presidents have fought wars and made peace, explored and annexed vast territories and built a nation out of a handful of colonies with fewer senior staffers than are needed to handle Michelle Obama’s Twitter account.
The government shutdown with its furloughing of 800,000 Federal workers isn’t the apocalypse that the political establishment claims it is. The apocalypse is the very existence of 800,000 Federal workers who can be sent home without any apocalypse until some deal is hammered out and they return to their jobs within the bowels of a massive bureaucracy that extends its reach and influence into every household.
From Charles Krauthammer in The National Review, Who Locked Little Johnny out of Yellowstone? ,
Moreover, the administration was clearly warned. Republican Scott Brown ran in the most inhospitable of states, Massachusetts, on the explicit promise to cast the deciding vote blocking Obamacare. It was January 2010, the height of the debate. He won. Reid ignored this unmistakable message of popular opposition and conjured a parliamentary maneuver — reconciliation — to get around Brown.
Nothing illegal about that. Nothing illegal about ramming it through without a single opposition vote. Just totally contrary to the modern American tradition — and the constitutional decency — of undertaking major social revolutions only with bipartisan majorities. Having stuffed Obamacare down the throats of the GOP and the country, Democrats are now paying the price.
And from my post Thoughts on the Shutdown,
The shutdown has demonstrated how many non essential workers the federal government has. This is a concept that is foreign to anyone running a for-profit enterprise. While government representatives and media sycophants drone on about how this affects ‘real people’, most of us have barely noticed any change in our lives. Ok, my accountant cannot get info from the IRS, and I am sure those federal workers who are laid off are feeling some pain.
But the rest of America has been feeling this pain for some time- so forgive me if I lack sympathy for the federal employees who feel they are in limbo. Even laid off you realize this will end in a few weeks and your pay will be restored. Most of the workers who lost their jobs in the private sector did not fare so well.
I would recommend a procedural rule that both parties could easily support. In the event of a shutdown the total pay of all congressmen and their staff should be the first to be cut. That should avoid this mess in the future.
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