Topic of the Moment: Government Shutdown, Budget Impass
So, normally I would comment on something like this, as it's sorta mundane politics and all, but it occurred to me recently that many pundits tend to only take stances on "easy" issues, and tend to dodge the harder ones (and/or take an oversimplified view on them, to avoid a possible admission that real-world issues can be "hard"). I've always thought of myself as a problem solver (first-order approximation and all), though, and to that end I think it's somewhat worthwhile to give a perspective on more messy issues also. So to that end, my thoughts on the current government shutdown conflict and impasse.
First, the basics. Trump wants funding for the wall (well, really a down payment; the actual wall is estimated to cost between $8B and $70B, although a reasonable guess is probably around $25B, and Trump is demanding $5.7B). The Democrats don't want to fund it, and that's had caused a budget related government shutdown.
Next, some observations, re Trump's take. Trump campaigned, in part, on building a wall, and threw in a boast that he'd make Mexico pay for it (initially directly, then later revised to mean through savings with trade agreements; both boasts are utterly absurd lies, of course). Trump claims an ongoing crisis of illegal immigration, which may be true in the general sense, but in the context which Trump frames the narrative (ie: crime), is also utter crap. Similarly, the national emergency as a potential workaround to Congress refusing to allocate the money is garbage, many of the statistics Trump quotes are false, etc.; in what should be news to nobody at this point, Trump is mostly ignorant and/or full of shit on this entire topic, as usual for him.
Side note: Also as typical for Trump, he is showing that he's an abysmally poor negotiator in this context, essentially just grandstanding and throwing childish tantrums. He's literally holding the functional government hostage to extort money from Congress, as we would call "terrorism" in any other context.
However, somewhat lost in the partisan fighting and grandstanding, there is an ongoing (and large) issue with illegal aliens in the country, and by extension with border security in general, and the Democrats are not blameless in that problem. In fact, the whole previous amnesty grant fuels a lot of the current issues, with the Obama unconstitutional DACA edict (ie: amnesty-lite) amplifying the problem. Once again, despite all the ignorance, nonsense, lies, tantrums, and political garbage, Trump is sorta incidentally right that there is a problem; it's unfortunate that all his other garbage means nobody can even begin to discuss the real issues.
So, what I would do, to prevent this sort of impasse:
First and foremost, we need a different mechanism of funding basic governmental operations, so that corrupt and partisan politicians cannot hold that hostage. We should have a defined set of operations which are "normal" (ie: ongoing operations, no new projects or new expenditures), and in the absence of an explicit budget allocation, those should continue to be funded. Along the same lines, the debt ceiling should be automatically raised in tandem (although I detest unlimited deficit spending, the debt ceiling has proven wholly ineffectual at limiting that anyway, and is worse as a tool for partisan fighting). The government should do these two things, so people who we need/want to keep working while politicians fight about garbage issues will keep getting paid, and basic services will keep getting funded.
Aside: Honestly, that step alone should be sufficient, if done well, to eliminate 90%+ of government shutdown budget fights. Removing the ability to hold basic welfare and livelihoods of a large swath of the American population hostage would remove a lot of the leverage politicians have to get pork projects pushed through.
Second, we need to figure out how to limit the pork and "horse-trading" which defines budget composition in general, and make Congress approve every individual spending project. Fund the stuff which is non-controversial and generally desired first, then worry about fighting over the down payment for a well/fence or whatever. Yeah, that means less special-interest pork projects without broader consensus... ie: a win for the American people.
Honestly, that's probably all that would be needed for this particular problem. Yeah, we should do more for border security, but I'm not sure what the "right" answer there is, and I'm absolutely sure that we're not going to make positive progress toward that answer in the current political climate. I have some thoughts, but I won't get into them here, since this is already somewhat long.
One problem at a time; the more pressing one is getting the partisan wackos out of office, and preventing them from getting elected again. That, though, is a really "hard" problem.
First, the basics. Trump wants funding for the wall (well, really a down payment; the actual wall is estimated to cost between $8B and $70B, although a reasonable guess is probably around $25B, and Trump is demanding $5.7B). The Democrats don't want to fund it, and that's had caused a budget related government shutdown.
Next, some observations, re Trump's take. Trump campaigned, in part, on building a wall, and threw in a boast that he'd make Mexico pay for it (initially directly, then later revised to mean through savings with trade agreements; both boasts are utterly absurd lies, of course). Trump claims an ongoing crisis of illegal immigration, which may be true in the general sense, but in the context which Trump frames the narrative (ie: crime), is also utter crap. Similarly, the national emergency as a potential workaround to Congress refusing to allocate the money is garbage, many of the statistics Trump quotes are false, etc.; in what should be news to nobody at this point, Trump is mostly ignorant and/or full of shit on this entire topic, as usual for him.
Side note: Also as typical for Trump, he is showing that he's an abysmally poor negotiator in this context, essentially just grandstanding and throwing childish tantrums. He's literally holding the functional government hostage to extort money from Congress, as we would call "terrorism" in any other context.
However, somewhat lost in the partisan fighting and grandstanding, there is an ongoing (and large) issue with illegal aliens in the country, and by extension with border security in general, and the Democrats are not blameless in that problem. In fact, the whole previous amnesty grant fuels a lot of the current issues, with the Obama unconstitutional DACA edict (ie: amnesty-lite) amplifying the problem. Once again, despite all the ignorance, nonsense, lies, tantrums, and political garbage, Trump is sorta incidentally right that there is a problem; it's unfortunate that all his other garbage means nobody can even begin to discuss the real issues.
So, what I would do, to prevent this sort of impasse:
First and foremost, we need a different mechanism of funding basic governmental operations, so that corrupt and partisan politicians cannot hold that hostage. We should have a defined set of operations which are "normal" (ie: ongoing operations, no new projects or new expenditures), and in the absence of an explicit budget allocation, those should continue to be funded. Along the same lines, the debt ceiling should be automatically raised in tandem (although I detest unlimited deficit spending, the debt ceiling has proven wholly ineffectual at limiting that anyway, and is worse as a tool for partisan fighting). The government should do these two things, so people who we need/want to keep working while politicians fight about garbage issues will keep getting paid, and basic services will keep getting funded.
Aside: Honestly, that step alone should be sufficient, if done well, to eliminate 90%+ of government shutdown budget fights. Removing the ability to hold basic welfare and livelihoods of a large swath of the American population hostage would remove a lot of the leverage politicians have to get pork projects pushed through.
Second, we need to figure out how to limit the pork and "horse-trading" which defines budget composition in general, and make Congress approve every individual spending project. Fund the stuff which is non-controversial and generally desired first, then worry about fighting over the down payment for a well/fence or whatever. Yeah, that means less special-interest pork projects without broader consensus... ie: a win for the American people.
Honestly, that's probably all that would be needed for this particular problem. Yeah, we should do more for border security, but I'm not sure what the "right" answer there is, and I'm absolutely sure that we're not going to make positive progress toward that answer in the current political climate. I have some thoughts, but I won't get into them here, since this is already somewhat long.
One problem at a time; the more pressing one is getting the partisan wackos out of office, and preventing them from getting elected again. That, though, is a really "hard" problem.
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