Well, here we are seven months later, and life has not come to a halt after the March 1st sequester kicked in. There hasn't been a great(er) recession and, except for visits to the White House, life doesn't seem to be much affected.
The government shutdown is beginning to look the same. Hours from a week of federal government shutdown, the consequences are hard to see on the personal level. (No one in my extended family has felt even a twinge of impact except my brother, a federal employee, who has gotten a week of what will be paid vacation as the President and Senate leadership have changed their minds and agreed with House leadership on approving paying them retroactively in piecemeal legislation.)
Ira Stoll of the New York Sun writes:
Every day that passes without dire consequences--or any consequences--makes the politicians and media who hyped a disaster look like liars or fools.The government “shutdown” is starting to feel a lot like the sequester — a lot of alarmist warnings that the sky is going to fall, followed by business pretty much as usual.That’s not to minimize the genuine inconvenience or worse for those government employees who have been furloughed, or for cancer patients involved in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, an institution that House Republicans voted to fund but that Senate Democrats are holding hostage.
For most of the rest of us, it turns out that the government can “shut down” and life goes on pretty much the same as it did before. Now there’s a valuable insight that it’s almost worth having the government shut down to discover.
It is a "valuable insight" that "the government can 'shut down' and life [go] on pretty much the same as it did before". Add to that the insight that politicians and big media have their own agenda which too often doesn't line up with the truth, and you have a valuable learning experience for the American public.
2 comments:
17% of governmental staff, mostly from EPA and the Department of Vegetation, have been furloughed. That's not even close to a government "shutdown". And while Barry Cades is doing his level best to "make it hurt" (and succeeding for residents of "gateway" towns into Yellowstone and Olympic National Parks), I suspect most people see it as the charade that it is.
Oddly, though his Park Police threatened to arrest WWII veterans because Shutdown, they opened the National Mall today for a union-orchestrated "protest" demanding "respect and dignity" for illegal aliens.
Wake me if something happens.
Max, as you pointed out in one of your posts, the "slim down" of these agencies, especially EPA, is actually good news. It comes under the heading of "do no harm". Heh.
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