The Shut Down Part II: Coming this January to a Federal Government Near You.

By Michael Groff

After a 16 day government shut down, federal employees were returning to work on Thursday.  Shortly before midnight Wednesday, the House and Senate were able to reach a temporary budget agreement that would keep the government operational through January.  This latest budget resolution also prevents the United States from defaulting on the debt.

“There are no winners”, said President Barack Obama with regard to the more than two week government shut down.  While the President repeatedly asked for compromise and called for an end to the rhetoric, he was quick to point out that all of this (the shut down) could have been avoided had “one side” not engaged in “Brinksmanship”. Obvious rhetorical hypocrisy aside, perhaps the President was partially correct in that much of this fiasco could have been avoided.

The House of Representatives, currently occupied by the Republicans, is the branch of government that is in charge of the budget for the nation.  Essentially they hold the check book and can decide how much funding, if any, a certain department or project will receive.  Realizing that their ultimate goal to repeal ‘Obamacare’ (The Affordable Care Act) is an impossible dream, Republicans came up with the idea of defunding the measure.  Pretty clever, right?

Flashback to just a few weeks ago; the polls weren’t looking so great for President Obama, his approval rating was near it’s lowest level since taking office in 2009, Americans were somewhat skeptical about the looming shut down, the debt and even the Affordable Care Act.  Republicans were going into the budget negotiations in the position of strength.  Had the GOP stayed with their original message from the 2012 campaign to cut spending across the board it is likely that Democrats would have had to make some concessions.   Republicans, however, tunnel visioned to the Affordable Care Act and Democrats were never going to budge on this measure.  A stalemate ensued and the government shut down begins.

After several days, the poll numbers begin to shift.  Republican favorability begins dropping, and even worse for the GOP, the rollout of the Affordable Care Act begins as scheduled.  The irony in the entire shut down is that the Republicans were fighting to defund a project that was going to occur anyway because of other legislative measures and funding already in place.  President Obama’s approval rating began climbing, despite the fact that the websites for ‘Obamacare’ weren’t working properly.  The tide was turning against the GOP and so some members of the party began renegotiating budget talks.  Of course in this situation the Republicans were now in a position of weakness, each day the shut down continued they looked worse and worse.  In the end, 16 days worth of shut down, billions in back pay, the GOP getting absolutely nothing out of the many items they wanted changed in the budget and President Obama’s approval rating actually went up a few points.  Could this have backfired any worse for the right?

Republicans Not the Only Loser in the Shut Down

The shut down also showed the American people one other interesting tidbit.  Government isn’t nearly as important as some people would like you to believe.   During the last 16 days national parks, monuments and national forests were closed because federal employees weren’t there to monitor or operate the facilities.  This could have had the potential to cost local economies millions of dollars each day, but local governments and private business contributions saved the day in many cases by providing the funding necessary to reopen these areas.

Just another example of how local government and private enterprise can do things more efficiently than the federal government.  So, perhaps, the other big loser in the government shut down was the government itself as people began to learn that there are other ways of handling a crisis than simply turning to the feds.

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