Bad Times

As I write this, the shutdown of the US government has entered its second day. By the time you read this, it will probably be in its third day, but I sincerely hope it is somehow over by then. It's obviously a very bad thing, but it is not at all a simple thing (evidenced by the fact that this "shutdown" leaves many of the tangible signs that we have a federal government intact. We are still getting mail and being protected by a standing army, but we do not get to see the pandas at the national zoo, for example).

It seems that the shutdown itself, while not great, is also not itself the absolutely worst thing. We've gotten through shutdowns before. Who on Earth remembers the hardships of the last one, waged between Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich? I remember it happening, but I would be hard-pressed to name one thing about it that that made life worse during that time. So far little of what I've read about sounds bad unless you happen to work for the federal government.

It's what's behind the shutdown that's bad. We've got people in Congress who seem absurdly, cartoonishly inept and determined to battle each other regardless of what is actually at stake. The House, controlled by Republicans, has carried out the Tea Party mission of mindlessly flinging itself against the brick wall that is the Affordable Care Act. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, is powerless to single-handedly make a budget happen and has been content to let them do that in hopes that they would catch all the blame for this shutdown.

It gets worse than a shutdown. We once again face the debt ceiling. We're not going to be able to curtail our spending before we get to it on or around October 17th, so we're either going to raise it or we're going to default on our financial obligations. This really would be a first, and it's impossible to overstate the severity of such a failure. It is deeply dismaying that there is only the Congress that has brought us to this point to keep things from getting any worse. I am not sanguine.