The Current Government Shutdown

Oh yes, were you not aware? The United States government is now closed for business. It has been for 12-days now. Some 800,000 federal employees are not getting paid, are not paying their own bills, and their debts for houses and automobiles are falling into default. The United States Coast Guard is no longer on duty. And, on the good side, the United States Border Patrol is standing down due to lack of funds!

Government shutdowns are familiar to most Americans, but they’re a relatively recent development. They are the result of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.  It required a new budget committee pass a ‘concurrent budget resolution' (to be passed by Congress no later than May 15) outlining the government's overall expenditures and receipts.

Since then, Congress has failed to authorize funding for the federal government on 18 separate occasions. The first six of those didn’t actually affect the functioning of government at all.

It wasn’t until a set of opinions issued by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1980 and ’81 that the government started treating “funding gaps”— periods when Congress has failed to allocate funds for the ongoing functions of government — as necessitating the full or partial shutdown of government agencies.  Since legislation is a process requiring House and Senate approval, and getting past a veto by the president, anyone can stop the process.

The current shut-down arises from Congress' failure to include $5-billion as a start-up (total cost $25 to 30-billion) of funding for Trump's great wall along our southern border, which Trump promises to veto.  The Democrats, who now control Congress, say a wall is a 5th-century solution to a 21st-century problem.  Moreover, Trump formerly promised that "Mexico would pay for" the wall and the US taxpayer would not be bothered.    He now claims that Mexico is paying for it, only in the form of tariffs on it's goods.  He wants the US to put up the front money.  When it is pointed out that American citizens pay for tariffs, not Mexico, he shifts the subject: he insists that you are not for border security.  Just more subterfuge and lies.

So we are at a stalemate, some two weeks into it.  Trump claims that if Democrats don't want to build the wall, it will be a long shutdown.  He has promised he will "wear the mantle" and "take the blame" for the closure.    Meanwhile, some 800,000 federal employees are not getting paid; which Trump says is OK because they are Democrats anyway.