Fiddle About – from the Rock Opera Tommy by the Who
Nixon
Our internet-fueled world moves swiftly. Yesterday, the least likely President of all achieved a peace deal in the Middle East. There’s an old political phrase, “Nixon went to China”. It’s ironic, because Nixon made his political “bones” by being a rabid anti-Communist. So when Nixon really did go to China, to sit with arch-Communists Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he may have been the only American politician with the political ability to do so. Trump is much the same. Perhaps, for the first time, he really was the “only one” who could solve the Middle East. I hope it lasts.
Meanwhile the United States Government remains “technically” closed. Congress has failed to reach a budget agreement, now going on for two weeks. And because there is no budget, there is no money available to continue government functions. That used to be a “HUGE” deal.
Remember the late 1990’s, when the government shutdown, and all the normal White House staffers were sent home. Only the senior advisors, and the unpaid interns remained to continue “running” the government. One of those interns, a twenty-one year old woman, brought pizza for the senior staff, and ended up having sex with the President. We remember how that ended. As a high school senior government teacher, I had to dance around the meaning of the word “is”, and the meaning of the word “sex”.
Abnormal Times
I don’t see any “furloughs” in the White House. They seem to be ignoring all of the “trappings” of a Government shutdown. Probably safer for the young interns there.
In “normal times”, there would be on-going negotiations between the majority leaders and minority leaders in the Congress, and a President trying to get the doors open again. But these are not normal times.
Trump left to go to the Middle East. House Speaker Johnson refuses to talk to Minority Leader Jefferies, and won’t allow the House to come back into session. He won’t even swear-in a newly elected Congresswoman from Arizona. (That might have something to do with a House move to force the Justice Department to reveal the “entire” EPSTEIN FILE). And while the Senate is at least in session, they don’t seem to be talking either. This shutdown feels semi-permanent.
Blame Game
At first, Republicans blamed the shutdown on Democrats wanting to give “undocumented migrants health care”. But the reality of Federal law snuffed out that argument. Law prohibits spending Federal money on the undocumented, with an exception for hospital reimbursement for lifesaving care. When that fell apart, the Republicans simply said that they won’t spend the money.
Meanwhile, Democrats are waiting for the November insurance bills to hit American kitchen tables. The expected increases, Dems hope, will force Republicans to start negotiating. Pressure has to come from somewhere, and Democrats hope the Republican base will be shocked by the rising costs, and start to push their leadership.
American leaders are “fiddling about”. Not much is getting done in Congress, and the President seems pleased to be unfettered with the legal niceties of legislative approval. So what’s the problem?
Real World Problems
Government workers are facing their first payday without a check. Their last full payment was on October 1. That’s 1.6 million workers in the United States, a big chunk of the economy that will be unable to spend for rent and food. There are government services curtailed: social security checks will go out, but processing of new or changed social security benefits is delayed. TSA agents and FAA air-traffic controllers are required to work – but they aren’t getting paid. National Parks remain open, but unsupervised, and un-serviced (think trash and restrooms).
When will the shutdown end? When the pressure grows so great on the politicians that they are required to talk to each other. Will that be when the Republican base starts screaming about insurance, or when the pressure on any four Democratic Senators who “hold the line” of the shutdown gets so bad, that they decide to fold. Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez-Masto, along with Maine Independent Angus King, already have.
We’d expect bleary-eyed Senators to be talking all night. In other times, we’d have a President locking everyone in a White House conference room until they came out with a deal. But today, there seems to be no appetite for negotiations, and the Federal doors remain closed.
It’s just another sign of our polarized times; so divided, that we can’t even talk about it. All we can do is “Fiddle About”.
