Day Six of the Shutdown

Day Six of the Shutdown

The shutdown of the US federal government is now in its sixth day and it seems as if there is no end in sight. As I’ve already written about, the fight is over whether or not to fund the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Many pundits have been predicting a short shutdown as it is deeply unpopular with the American people. Unfortunately this has not been true and the shutdown continues.

There has been a lot going on in the last few days that you should know about and I will endeavour to explain them to you.

Two factions are beginning to form in the Republican Party over this debate. On one side you have radicals like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann who are enjoying the shutdown and want it to continue as long as possible. Opposing them as the likes of John McCain and Peter King (when you make Peter King look like a moderate you know you’ve gone too far). Now it’s not like any of these more ‘moderate’ Republicans actually like Obamacare, they just recognise that staging a government shutdown to try and defund it is political suicide. The latter group’s worries are entirely justified; polling consistently puts opposition to the strategy at around 70% and Republicans are blamed more for the shutdown than the Democrats. In ways you also have a third faction, not radical enough to enjoy the shutdown but too scared to speak out against the Tea Party. If you were to split the 232 House Republicans into the factions, about 20 would be in the vocally anti-shutdown faction, around 40 in the radical faction and the rest form the silent majority. Think about that for a moment, if only 40 Republicans want the government shutdown out of 232, then why is it happening? The simple answer is fear and gerrymandering. The radicals here have come from districts that have been gerrymandered to the extreme and so they know they will never face the wrath of the voters, no matter how unpopular the policy. The silent majority fear the wrath of the Tea Party, if they do not do the bidding of the Tea Party then they face a challenge within the party and they lose their job.

John Boehner, the speaker of the House, also is deeply unpopular in his party. Earlier this year he narrowly was re-elected as speaker with just six votes to spare! If he upsets the Tea Party then he risks losing his job. John Boehner could end the shutdown any time he wanted. If he brought a government funding bill (with no mention of the Affordable Care Act) to the floor of the House, it would pass.

If you have been listening to any Republican over the past few days then you will have heard the talking point “Obama won’t negotiate”. As a tactic it has been working well and people are beginning to ask questions about this. The truth however is very different, the Democrats have already compromised! When you hear talk of a “clean continuing resolution” (sometimes referred to as a “clean CR”), what that means is; a bill to fund the government without anything else attached. So since the Democrats want a clean CR and Republicans want one that defunds the Affordable Care Act, Republicans argue that there has to be some sort of compromise. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. The clean CR is already a massive compromise for the Democrats as the funding levels provided are several hundred billion dollars lower than the Democrats want, almost exactly in line with the Republicans. So next time a Republican tells you the Democrats won’t compromise, you tell them the truth.

Another note of frustration for much of the general public is the fact that Congress still gets paid during the shutdown, while other federal workers are not paid. Some Congressmen have decided to give up their pay, or donate it to charity, as long as the shutdown is in effect. To be honest this doesn’t really matter to them as most are incredibly wealthy already. Those refusing pay include Harry Reid, Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Yet not all of members of Congress have given up their pay, some of the reasons are laughably ridiculous and show just how out of touch the current Congress is! Congresswoman Renee Ellmers (R-NC) was quoted as saying “I need my paycheque, that’s the bottom line”, considering her husband is a surgeon, need might not be the word she was looking for.

Members of Congress get paid $174,000 per annum, which works out at $477 every day. If the shutdown goes on for a week, they get $3,339 for being incompetent, if it continues for a month (30 days) then they get $14,310 for being incompetent. And Congress wonders why its approval rating is at 10%?

What the coming week will bring us, I don’t know. The dynamics within the Republican Party are too difficult to predict. On the other hand I will happily predict that the Democrats will not buckle under the pressure and finally beat the Republicans in a policy debate on Capitol Hill.