US Federal Government Shutdown

[ICantSpellDawg]

Insane. If you start a fight with no strategy to win, the other guy is not obligated to help you figure out how to exit with dignity. Have any of these fat old white men read Sun Tzu? Even heard of him?

This whole thing is beyond ludicrous, beyond comedy, beyond satire.

The House Republicans appear to have picked a fight with no game plan, no clear goals, just well-developed feelings of entitlement and rage.

Or as my favorite blogger put it in an epic rant today:

"There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past."

I don't want to restore anything. What are we going to lose, by that standard? If you believe that our perceived goal is impossible and absurd, what would successful strategy deliver that frenzied nihilistic barrages against the enemy won't? Failure is guaranteed, the least we can do is make our opponent suffer.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

What's her position on Dear Reagan arming OBL, btw?

I don't know that she's made any statements regarding that, so I cannot answer. The American political right, at the time, saw the whole thing as a way to put a thumb in the Soviet Bear's eye. At the time Good Time Charlie was pushing for funding for that CIA dirty trick effort, we were still fearful of Sov Tank brigades rolling through the Fulda gap thicker than cockroaches on a tenement floor. Making the Ruskis hurt was considered a good effort.

As is all too often true with the USA, we had a much better plan for the short term and far less of a good grasp on long term unintended consequences....including the ISI funding and equipping Saudi wahabist mujahedeen along with Pashtuns.

I suspect Bachman missed that too, just as most of us did.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm no longer capable of discussing this in a civilized fashion. Screw the Tea Party for starting it, screw the R's for going along with it, and screw Obama and the dems for not reacting to it satisfactorily.

Seems civilized enough to me, though I read it after the edit....

"Civilized" does NOT require you to acquiesce to idiocy, merely to signal your disdain and disgust in a relatively reasoned manner.

[Myth]

Nasa was apparently going to announce something big at 12 pm. USA time today. But their site is shut down because of the goverment shut down. LOL. Such absurdity, such orchestrated shennanigans. Watch your three rigned circus FYI the websites for the CIA, FBI and IRS are working just fine, as is usa.gov, only the NASA website is down.

Also, stopping some imaginary funding doesn't immediately render a website useless. likely it's hosted on local machines or on pre-paid dedicated servers/collocation and they have internal admins running it. So no way in hell does an artifical goverment shutdown make NASA's website go "poof" just like that. So much fail...

[Papewaio]

Nasa was apparently going to announce something big at 12 pm. USA time today. But their site is shut down because of the goverment shut down. LOL. Such absurdity, such orchestrated shennanigans. Watch your three rigned circus FYI the websites for the CIA, FBI and IRS are working just fine, as is usa.gov, only the NASA website is down.

Also, stopping some imaginary funding doesn't immediately render a website useless. likely it's hosted on local machines or on pre-paid dedicated servers/collocation and they have internal admins running it. So no way in hell does an artifical goverment shutdown make NASA's website go "poof" just like that. So much fail...

Don't let facts get in the way of the story.

As of the 2-Oct 10 of the 56 gov websites went dark

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...gly-arbitrary/

It does seem arbitrary. But it isn't only NASA and they weren't the first. It is based on who is administered by critical staff and/or non-discretionary budget.

[TinCow]

Heeeeere is an except from the email going around by the VA:

In the event of a prolonged shutdown, no decisions on appeals or motions will be issued by the Board of Veterans
Appeals, and no Board field hearings on appeals will be held

I'm relatively lucky. Old veterans or veterans who suffered severe maimings in the line of duty will be hit first.

Anyone who supports this shutdown and claims to support the troops is a damned liar. Or a politically illiterate moron. Either way.

I'll comment on the above bit, since it's not entirely clear and that's where I work. The entire Board is considered non-essential and subject to furlough (well, technically there's 1 person out of nearly 700 that is considered essential, but she can't do all our work herself). However, we remain open and are operating because we have money left over from the last fiscal year. That money was provided to us by Congress so that we could hire more attorneys to help cut into the backlog. Instead of using that money to hire new people, we are now using it as a lifeline to keep operating. That money will keep us going through the end of October, apparently, but it will run out at some point in early November. At that time all appeal processing will also stop. In addition, even though we are operating many administrative support aspects of the VA are not. This includes the mail system. As a result, even though we are completing work it is not being dispatched to Veterans or to the regional offices. That means that we have finished work simply piling up and not going anywhere. That will result in a huge workload on the administrative side of things once we get back to work and the tide of paper is unleashed. We also aren't receiving any mail from veterans or their representatives, which means that any newly submitted evidence, motions, arguments, etc. are not getting considered in conjunction with the cases we are adjudicating. That will likely result in us having to re-do an abnormally large number of cases once the mail starts flowing again and we get new documents that impact decisions that were already issued. We also cannot conduct hearings nor get any additional development done on cases. All development work on the new paperless claims system has also halted, as most of the IT staff are non-essential and currently furloughed.

In short, the progress we've made in reducing the backlog over the past year is very rapidly being reversed. If the shutdown lasts long enough, the backlog will actually grow in 2013 instead of shrink. Congress needs to get their shit together, these games have consequences.

[TinCow]

Nasa was apparently going to announce something big at 12 pm. USA time today. But their site is shut down because of the goverment shut down. LOL. Such absurdity, such orchestrated shennanigans. Watch your three rigned circus FYI the websites for the CIA, FBI and IRS are working just fine, as is usa.gov, only the NASA website is down.

Also, stopping some imaginary funding doesn't immediately render a website useless. likely it's hosted on local machines or on pre-paid dedicated servers/collocation and they have internal admins running it. So no way in hell does an artifical goverment shutdown make NASA's website go "poof" just like that. So much fail...

97% of NASA has been furloughed. My wife's best friend is a PhD who works for NASA creating safety systems to stop airplanes from crashing. Her work is non-essential and she is not working or getting paid. Due to serious budget issues (NASA doesn't pay very well to begin with, people work there because they love their work), she has had to file for unemployment benefits. It's ridiculous.

You might excuse NASA for being a bit angry about this situation when you realize just how much they are getting frogged over. Anyone who's complaining about the lack of a NASA website needs to check their attitude at the door.

[Lemur]

J-Pod, a reliably rightwing commentator:

Suicide of the Right

Every piece of evidence we have so far on the government shutdown shows the public is blaming Republicans most of all for the standoff. On Monday, an ABC poll showed 71 percent fault the GOP; 61 percent fault Congressional Democrats; 51 percent fault President Obama.

Yes, Democrats look bad. Yes, Obama is probably doing himself no favors by saying he won’t negotiate when the public wants politicians in Washington to work together.
But Republicans look considerably worse. [...]

If ObamaCare had been as unpopular as conservatives believed, their plan for the shutdown — that there would be a public uprising to force Democratic senators in close races in 2014 to defund it — would’ve worked. It didn’t. Not a single senator budged.

Their tactic failed, and now what they are left with is House Speaker John Boehner basically begging the president of the United States to negotiate with him.

One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 votes in one congressional district in Ohio.

[Andres]

I believe this is precisely what we are in now. I used to believe that there was a lot of wisdom in the way our government was created, with separation of powers between the branches, as well as with the distribution of powers between the states and the federal government. However, I have begun to have serious reservations over the quality of our entire system of government. As I now see it, any system of government that allows an impasse like this to occur is so fundamentally flawed as to be actively dangerous. Our current system of government is broken and no harping on about the wisdom of lots of old dead guys will change that fact. While the system worked relatively well for nearly 200 years (minus a minor civil war), I do not hold out much hope of us ever recovering from the current crisis. Now that minority parties have figured out how to block the entire working of the government, there is nothing to stop them from continuing to do that in the future, absent a total overhaul of the redistricting system, which itself I believe is impossible. Essentially, they can't put the rabbit back in the hat. As such, I am concerned that we have before us decades of political turmoil of this nature. The only alternative is going the French route and simply creating a new Republic with a new Constitution, but that's basically impossible too.

Clearly, this crisis shows the superiority of the Belgian system.

We are in a constant political crisis for a long while now but even during our famous 541 days without government, there was no notable difference for the population.

Just say the world when you want Belgians to take over your country.

For a modest fee, I am willing to start ruling the US, together with other drunkards well educated Belgians..

[Lemur]

Good analysis:

The truth is that Republicans can pretty much say whatever they want, no matter what the bizarre logic and no matter what connection it has to what they were saying five minutes ago, and Fox News will totally accept it and blast it for hours or days.

The result? Republicans have become incredibly lazy. After all, why bother constructing a coherent argument if you don’t need one.

So why is it a problem? Well, for one thing, it means that it’s easy for Republican politicians to fall deep within an information feedback loop, not even realizing that what everyone within that loop is excited about is unpopular, or perhaps just irrelevant, to the other 80 percent or so of the nation. Or to put it another way: Benghazi!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Heard an NPR interview with George Will this morning.

George Will asserts that using debt limits and minority stall/stalemating are integral components of our Madisonian system of governance.

Of course, while he clearly supported the existence/use of such a tactic as manifesting Madison's concept that each branch should be struggling with the others and thereby preserve the balance, Will also said that using the tactic in connection with the ACA was a poor choice since it wouldn't work and could well backfire.

[Montmorency]

I feel like posting another flippant analogy:

The GOP's maneuver, unless yet holding back some devious phase, is like setting an elephant loose in a house because the foundations are being weakened by termites.

George Will asserts that using debt limits and minority stall/stalemating are integral components of our Madisonian system of governance.

*grumble*

Anyone got any more essays on sound reforms that would make the system more majoritarian?

[Husar]

Anyone got any more essays on sound reforms that would make the system more majoritarian?

I think these are a good start: http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/

[Montmorency]

I'll watch them later, but at a glance they seem to be focused on the electoral process.

How about Congressional/legislative procedure, or even the structure of the houses? OK

[Husar]

I'll watch them later, but at a glance they seem to be focused on the electoral process.

How about Congressional/legislative procedure, or even the structure of the houses? OK

Well, the point is that if the electoral process allowed for more than two parties with more varied views and agendas, it might be easier to find a compromise and represent a larger portion of the people. For example the Tea Party might be an actual independent party then because their views differ from those of many other Republicans. ATM they nominally stay Republican because as an independent party they'd just fade away. And doing this also apparently allows them to exert more power than they should be able to.

[Lemur]

To anyone still caught up in the delusion that the Repubs want to negotiate anything at all, I present the history of my own congresscritter, Paul Ryan:

Ryan’s entire history strongly suggests he does not want to deal. Every major attempt to create bipartisan budget negotiations has been quashed by Ryan. He voted against the Bowles-Simpson proposal, kiboshed a 2011 agreement between John Boehner and President Obama, then single-handedly blew up a bipartisan Senate budget deal.

Obama’s reelection has not prompted Ryan to veer from this strategy. Last spring, the president tried to spur bipartisan negotiations by compromising with himself in his budget, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare along with reducing tax deductions. Ryan waved it away and made no counteroffer. Instead, working through what Republicans called the “Jedi Council,” Ryan crafted a strategy of using the debt ceiling to extract unreciprocated concessions. He spent much of the year repeatedly turning down a budget conference on the assumption that he could get a better deal by threatening default. He confidently assured Republicans that Obama would fold and bargain for the debt ceiling. (National Review’s Jonathan Strong two weeks ago: “I asked Ryan if he believes President Obama’s steadfast vows that he won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling. His reaction? You’ve got to be kidding me. ‘Oh, nobody believes that.’”)

Is it possible Ryan has undergone some deep-rooted mental conversion and now wants a regular, bipartisan budget negotiation where the two parties make trade-offs? It’s possible, sure.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Just say the world when you want Belgians to take over your country.

For a modest fee, I am willing to start ruling the US, together with other drunkards well educated Belgians..

Are you accepting payments in natura?

[drone]

To anyone still caught up in the delusion that the Repubs want to negotiate anything at all, I present the history of my own congresscritter, Paul Ryan:
...

When Obama hands the Fed a freshly minted $1T platinum coin on the 17th, will he be wearing a FU Paul Ryan t-shirt underneath his suit? And will Ryan's head explode?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

When Obama hands the Fed a freshly minted $1T platinum coin on the 17th, will he be wearing a FU Paul Ryan t-shirt underneath his suit? And will Ryan's head explode?

Wouldn't that be implode instead?

[drone]

Wouldn't that be implode instead?

Ryan lives in a vacuum, so I would say explode.

[ICantSpellDawg]

J-Pod, a reliably rightwing commentator:

Suicide of the Right

Every piece of evidence we have so far on the government shutdown shows the public is blaming Republicans most of all for the standoff. On Monday, an ABC poll showed 71 percent fault the GOP; 61 percent fault Congressional Democrats; 51 percent fault President Obama.

Yes, Democrats look bad. Yes, Obama is probably doing himself no favors by saying he won’t negotiate when the public wants politicians in Washington to work together.
But Republicans look considerably worse. [...]

If ObamaCare had been as unpopular as conservatives believed, their plan for the shutdown — that there would be a public uprising to force Democratic senators in close races in 2014 to defund it — would’ve worked. It didn’t. Not a single senator budged.

Their tactic failed, and now what they are left with is House Speaker John Boehner basically begging the president of the United States to negotiate with him.

One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 votes in one congressional district in Ohio.

Lemur is harkening the death of the GOP again. This can only be good news, as a year or 2 after his last prognostication we had the tea party run train on everyone at the midterms.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Lemur is harkening the death of the GOP again. This can only be good news, as a year or 2 after his last prognostication we had the tea party run train on everyone at the midterms.

Which (I suspect) he would assert proves him to be correct as he seas the Tea Party wing as being the instrument of the GOP's destruction.

[Greyblades]

Obama could take the wind out of the sails by delaying the individual mandate for a year, and nobody of consequence would find fault with that.

Er... excuse my ignorance but what difference would that make beyond pushing the chicken game back a year?

[Xiahou]

This only gets better. Newest insanity to grip the radicals is that hitting the debt ceiling won't matter. No, seriously.

Count Moody's Investors Service among the insane then I guess....

Moody’s: U.S. Need Not Default If Debt Ceiling Isn’t Raised

We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact. The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.

[Lemur]

Yes, Moody's has a sterling record when it comes to massive financial matters that deal with the stability of our union. By all means, let's trust them and Michelle Bachmann.

The Suicide on the Right editorial came from John Podhoretz, speechwriter to the Divine Ronald Reagan, National Review writer. If he says the Repubs are being insane, you might want to listen for more than a nanosecond.

The debunking of oh-let's-breach-the-debt-limit-and-see-what-happens insanity comes from Bruce Bartlett, former congressional assistant to Ron Paul, chair of The Most Sanctified Ronald Reagan's Joint Economic Committee, senior policy analyst for George H. W. Bush.

If I were to repost things actual liberals wrote, I think the two of you would need a spell on the fainting couch. When the arguments of rock-ribbed Republicans with impeccable bona fides sound like liberal whining, maybe you've gone someplace ... interesting.

[Xiahou]

My interest in the debt ceiling is mainly academic. I think the whole idea of the debt ceiling is a bit silly. Congress approved the spending already- the notion of the debt ceiling, when it was first conceived almost 100 years ago seems like just one of the many incremental steps congress has taken to abrogate their authority.

Yes, Moody's has a sterling record when it comes to massive financial matters that deal with the stability of our union. By all means, let's trust them and Michelle Bachmann.

Ah yes. Moody's and Moody's alone dropped the ball there, huh? So I guess if they downgrade the US's credit rating, you'll be similarly unconcerned.... cuz hey, they don't know what the hell they're talking about? amirite?

See, they've actually applied something known as "math" to the situation and determined that government receipts are enough to cover debt service. I'll take that over uninformed hand-wringing, no matter what team the particular talking head plays for. Certainly there would be consequences for bumping up against the debt ceiling, but default need not be one of them.

If I were to repost things actual liberals wrote

We don't need that when we have you.

Come on, don't dance around it. That "restriction of government expenditure" basically means screwing the poor by defunding the safety net. If you're taking an extreme view it is disingenuous to use such euphemisms.

Are you... responding to something I actually said?

[Montmorency]

See, they've actually applied something known as "math" to the situation and determined that government receipts are enough to cover debt service.

Ah, so it's the delusional "prioritization" scheme again.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ironside]

Ah yes. Moody's and Moody's alone dropped the ball there, huh? So I guess if they downgrade the US's credit rating, you'll be similarly unconcerned.... cuz hey, they don't know what the hell they're talking about? amirite?

See, they've actually applied something known as "math" to the situation and determined that government receipts are enough to cover debt service. I'll take that over uninformed hand-wringing, no matter what team the particular talking head plays for. Certainly there would be consequences for bumping up against the debt ceiling, but default need not be one of them.

They're outright saying that if the US drops for example all payments for the military or social security or medicare/aid (you can chose one of these, the other won't matter in size), the debt celing won't be a problem. I'm sure suddenly stop paying pensions for 50 million people won't have any negative side effects at all... Now that's a mandatory spending, so I suppose it's the military that will get abolished, being discretionary.

I think that counts as a crash and burn option.

[Husar]

Certainly there would be consequences for bumping up against the debt ceiling, but default need not be one of them.

Of course that's correct, you could stop all spending for your armed forces and use the money to pay interest for example.

I'm starting to like your approach...

[HopAlongBunny]

Decent summary of spending/expenditure consequences in event of no deal:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...crew-americans

The patient doesn't expire immediately, but its all about which limbs to amputate first.