The Shutdown

Congress could end the shutdown policy any time they want. Democrats enacted it to engineer a crisis to allow more spending. The Shutdown Rule says that if Congress goes past the deadline on passing their budgets, paychecks for “non-essential” government workers will cease until Congress and the President approve the budget to authorize spending.

This is a paid vacation for these “non-essential government employees”, because they are always paid back-pay after the budget is approved.  The budget in question doesn’t contain the funding needed to control the Border from migrant invaders and it includes a $20 billion increase in unnecessary spending.  The Republican Senate and the President will not approve the budget approved by the Democrat House.

The Shutdown includes 800,000 “non-essential government employees”, who will eventually get paid for working and not working. The obvious “non-essential” employees work for the Park Services.  National Parks will remain closed, but it’s Winter and not the tourist season.

The bulk of these “non-essential” employees is scattered throughout the federal workforce and some of them, like air traffic controllers are threatening slower air travel. This ripples throughout the agencies who are operating with smaller staffs through the shutdown.

The big inconvenience of continuing the Shutdown is that Democrats can’t get Republican agreement to pile on more politically directed unnecessary spending.

It will be interesting to see if the federal government can operate with fewer employees. Democrats will have to vote to end the shutdown rule in a separate bill and end it forever.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader