I was there in 1995 when the government closed because of a budget stalemate. I had to tell most of the Labor Department's 15,600 employees to go home and not return the next day. I also had to tell them I didn't know when they'd next get a paycheck.
There were two shutdowns, actually, rolling across the government in close succession, like thunder storms.
It's not the way to do the public's business.
Newt Gingrich got blamed largely because his ego was (and is) so big he couldn't stop blabbing that Clinton should be blamed. (Gingrich's complaint of a bad seat on Air Force One didn't help.)
But the larger loss was to the dignity and credibility of the United States government. When average Americans saw the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States behaving like nursery school children unable to get along, it only added to the prevailing cynicism.
Cynicism about government works to the Republicans' continued advantage.
Case in point: House Budget Chair Paul Ryan unveiled a plan today that should make every American cringe. It would turn Medicare into vouchers whose benefits are funneled into the pockets of private insurers. It would make Medicaid and Food Stamps into block grants that allow states to ignore poor people altogether. It would drastically cut funding for schools, roads, and much else Americans need. And many of the plan's savings would go to wealthy Americans who'd pay even lower taxes than they do today.
Ryan's plan has no chance of passage -- as long as Democrats are still in control of the Senate (even Democratic deficit hawks like Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson are appalled by it) and the White House.
But this so-called "blueprint" could be a blueprint for America's future when and if right-wing Republicans take charge.
Which is where the cynicism comes in -- and the shutdowns. Republicans may get blamed now. But if the shutdowns contribute to the belief among Americans that government doesn't work, Republicans win over the long term. As with the rise of the Tea Partiers, the initiative shifts to those who essentially want to close it down for good.
That's why it's so important that the President have something more to say to the American people than "I want to cut spending, too, but the Republican cuts go too far." The "going too far" argument is no match for a worldview that says government is the central problem to begin with.
Obama must show America that the basic choice is between two fundamental views of this nation. Either we're all in this together, or we're a bunch of individuals who happen to live within these borders and are mainly on their own.
This has been the basic choice all along -- when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, in the Civil War, when we went through World War I and World War II and the Great Depression in between, during the Civil Rights movement and beyond.
The president needs to remind us that as members of the same society we have obligations to one another -- that the wealthiest among us must pay their fair share of taxes, that any of us who loses our jobs or homes or gets terribly sick can count on the rest of us, and that we have collective obligations to our elderly, our children, and the rest of the planet.
This is why we have government. And anyone who wants to shut it down or cut it down because they say we can't afford it any longer is plain wrong. We are the richest nation in the world, richer than we've ever been. We can afford to remain a society whose members are in it together.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Birddog
Let's shut down our SMBs. I think our small business spends too much on capital improvements and accounting software.
Let's shut down the power plants, the grocery stores, the mines, tha manufacturing facilities... Let's see how long we get away with that.
Your anger is revealed as you called the behaviour of the Speaker of the House of Representatives as well as the President of the United States...."school children" because of their immature responses to each other...I feel your pain.
But, you have well foretold the possibility of the Republican strategy actually working and it is...
A little irritation was shown in the media when it was revealed(via public records) of the large corporations getting not only tax breaks, but in the case of General Electric a $3.8B refund...
But nobody, not even the right/conservatives have revealed that General Electric will build the largest solar paned manufacturing facility in the world right here in the United States of America.
A $6B manufacturing plant that will bring employees from every direction & pay them well so they can pay appropriate taxes....that is the model Republicans have talked about.
Yes, Congress has approved appropriate tax deductions as a valid way of satisfying a tax-debt, but GE of course is using the tax-breaks our government gives for 'green technology.'
Manufacturing frivolous taxes would prevent investment in all our future.
Continued GOP attempts to gut the power of the people with attacks on unions, public schools, and a 75 year legacy of legislative progress, will, I believe, send the tea baggers packing and the GOP into obscurity for the next decade.
Yikes. We are sooooo screwed.
MONEY CONTROLS ALL.
You know, I heard Clinton at a 2012 pep rally for a Senator. He gave the most beautiful speech, the speech Obama should have given, explaining the disillusionment of the American people because economic recovery was just not proceeding fast enough to relieve them. And so forth. He gave a speech that would have ensured the re-election of every Democrat running. Not to mention, a speech that also explained "Obamacare" so clearly that you would have voted for the damn thing if you were a Bagger.
You know, I'm tired of waiting for Obama to say the words. He climaxed in his campaign run and since then, we've been played for fools. We need a leader. We also need a leader who has an actual vision of a better life for all of us, and a path forward so that we can make our delayed entry into the 21st century.
All the world has failed at that so far. Good luck.
'The president needs to remind us that as members of the same society we have obligations to one another -- that the wealthiest among us must pay their fair share of taxes, that any of us who loses our jobs or homes or gets terribly sick can count on the rest of us, and that we have collective obligations to our elderly, our children, and the rest of the planet.'
Are you listening, Mr.President?
When a CEO can hire and fire the board that sets his salary, there's a spanner in the works.
When bank loan officers can pump out reams of trash loans and make huge amounts in commissions with no recourse when the loans go south and they can't even be prosecuted, something's rotten in Denmark.
When Senators can crush unions while their own $176,000 salaries, tax exemptions, and health care plans go untouched, the ghost in the machine gets angry.
When the GOP begins a take-no-prisoners strategy to force the passing of laws, even illegally if necessary, and the Dems are still trying to compromise with them, someone needs to take a serious look at how government is done. And it's not done best by a corporatocracy, a plurocracy, or fascism.
I'm not saying I'd place a penny bet on hearing it. I'm just saying that Reich's American vision should be the entire premise of government. And it should never be forgotten that it's the bedrock platform of the Democratic Party.
Got it. I really I had no idea that was it. I should take him to the woodshed tonight for his crimes against humanity.... I knew that boy was trouble!
What we need are people paying their fair share, not less under some mythical, continuously disproved theory that jobs and middle class riches spring from the keester of the wealthy man.
What we need is to leave Iraq and Afghanistan to fend for themselves. After all, one of the reasons the budget deficit is so large now is because Obama put the cost of the wars which bush was hiding, officially on the books. Slash that cost and MASSIVE savings are immediately recognized.
That blogger just didn't understand Reich's article. That we are all in this together.
MONEY CONTROLS. faved.