The latest crisis invented by the national media is the great October
"train wreck" - a confrontation between a liberal president and
a conservative Congress - that will "shut down the government."
The angst is palpable: what about the welfare checks? The mail and the military?
The aircraft controllers and class trips to the Capitol? The Clinton administration
is already describing a government shutdown as something between a catastrophe
and a cataclysm.
Gravely intones Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin: "Those who play that
game are taking an irresponsible risk with the financial health of this
nation by threatening to interrupt government operations, delay payments
to federal beneficiaries and creditors and raise questions of the government's
ability to pay its obligations."
Or Budget Director Alice Rivlin: "All of those activities that are
'essential' would be being carried on by federal employees who are volunteering
to stay at their posts. Think about air traffic controllers who haven't
been paid for two weeks, think about prison guards who haven't been paid
for two weeks, think about border control agents. There comes a point at
which you may not want to be relying on the public-spiritedness of people
who are standing between you and disaster."
But before you head for Canada or convert your dollars into deutschmarks,
take a deep breath. It's happened before, and outside the Beltway hardly
anyone complained. As former Budget Director Jim Miller said: "Only
the big spenders noticed."
The three-day, 1990 shutdown occurred when President Bush refused to sign
a continuing resolution because the House rejected the budget proposal from
the infamous 1990 budget summit. Granted, the three days were a weekend
and the Columbus Day holiday, so much of government wasn't scheduled to
be on the job anyway. But planes kept flying, the armed forces kept operating,
prison guards continued to work, and other "essential employees"
reported as usual.
This year, the government could shut down if a budget bill is not signed
before October 1, when a new fiscal year starts, or if the United States
reaches its $4.9 trillion debt limit - probably about mid-October - without
a law raising the limit. If either happens, the government will be out of
money unless Congress passes and the president signs a "continuing
resolution" to provide money on a temporary basis.
Obviously, a "shutdown" will be felt by many employees of the
federal government and by businesses that depend on their trade. However,
remember that there are a lot of "essential" employees who will
still be on the job.
Security Security recipients and federal and military retirees will get
their October checks as usual. (For that matter, the money for them will
still be available for later months if anybody is around to process the
checks.) The mail will still be delivered because the Post Office is a semiautonomous
corporation. Indeed, the Clinton administration has already drawn up a plan
that would keep air traffic controllers, meat and poultry inspectors, and
border control agents on the job, and ensure that Social Security checks
are issued.
The obvious solution, somehow overlooked by Alice Rivlin and the other doomsayers,
is the continuing resolution. The Congress could challenge the president
if a budget is still in doubt at the end of September by passing a continuing
resolution that authorized spending only at the reduced levels of growth
they want to make permanent later. Or they could put their welfare, Medicare,
Medicaid and tax cut proposals - all the measures that the President has
been making noises about vetoing - into one big package along with authority
to raise the debt ceiling. In either case, the president would have two
equally unpalatable choices: to agree to the Republican plans to reduce
the size of government or to shut the government down.
The administration hopes that what it is saying now about the ill effects
of a government shutdown will so incense the general public that it will
prevent the Congress from pressing forward with its own budget priorities
of eliminating Departments, reducing the growth of federal spending, and
shifting responsibility for some services back to the states.
In short, what is going on here is only a political power struggle. So concerned
are the liberals that the conservative Congress might actual reduce the
power of the central government, that they are trying to pre-empt the entire
argument by predicting Armageddon.
More likely, though, more and more people are going to conclude that if
we can get along with only "essential" government services for
a week or two, there's no reason we can't get along without the "non-essential"
services forever.
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a public policy research institute
founded in 1983 and internationally known for its studies on public policy
issues. The NCPA is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an office in Washington,
D.C.