As 2 November approaches, the most likely outcomes for Congress and the Montana Legislature are: (1) a Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, (2) a considerably diminished Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, (3) substantial, but not veto-proof, Republican majorities in the Montana Legislature, and (4) sharp, hard movement to the right for the Republicans, who are already a considerable distance from the center.
If this happens, you can bet the farm on protracted gridlock that could lead to another government shutdown, a shutdown potentially worse than the Newt Gingrich led 16 December 1995 to 6 January 1996 shutdown during the height of the Christmas holidays.
That shutdown was no picnic.
“It was a mess frankly, and devastating to the civil service,” said Donna Shalala, who served as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the last government shutdown, which ran from December 16, 1995 through January 6, 1996. “It seems to me it’s un-American.”
“Almost all employees are sent home,” says former Labor Department Secretary Robert Reich, who served alongside Shalala. “Most have no idea when they’ll be paid again.”
According to a 2004 report of the Congressional Research Service, “Government shutdowns have necessitated the furloughing of several hundred thousand federal employees and affect all sectors of the economy.”
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During the 1995-1996 shutdown, according to CRS, “[n]New patients were not accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ceased disease surveillance (information about the spread of diseases, such as AIDS and flu, were unavailable); hotline calls to NIH concerning diseases were not answered; and toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites stopped, resulting in 2,400 “Superfund” workers being sent home.”
To make matters worse, the economy today is in much worse shape than it was in 15 years ago. The impact of employees out of work, and beneficiaries without checks, will hit the country much harder in the next year than it did under President Clinton. “It would stop all new enrollees into the [Social Security] system,” Shalala said.
“It bounces through: it’s grocery stores, it’s farms,” she said — and the list goes on. “It bounces through when people don’t have money at that scale.” Talking Points Memo, 2 September 2010.
A variation on Newt’s theme was performed in Montana in 2007 when the Montana Legislature adjourned without adopting a budget. The cause? Republican intransigence, zealotry, and miscalculation. “They had a strategy,” I wrote that spring, “one they had gamed out, but, as they would learn at the end of the session, not one they had thought through completely.”
“Hang together,” they told themselves. “Vote as a bloc. Legislation must be approved by both houses. If we hang together, if we vote as a bloc, if we demonstrate more resolve than the Democrats — and we can and will because they are weak and our cause is righteous — we will prevail. Our tax cuts will be adopted. And Brian Schweitzer will be put in his place.”
That was the Republican mindset in the house from the opening day of the session. There was a religious fervor about it, a hyper-zealous intensity. It was, as the Helena Independent Record noted, the mindset of “…a party that apparently thinks all-out warfare is the way to do the people’s business.”
That all-out warfare inverted the traditional values of the legislative process. For the Republicans, the traditional virtue of compromise became the vice of betrayal. Civility became weakness, not strength. The caucus that outsmarted itself, 1 May 2007.
It could happen again — and this time it could be much worse due to the radicalization of the Republican Party. It’s not just the tea party wing of the GOP that’s driving the process, it’s the entire party’s frenzied determination to remove Barack Obama from the White House at all costs that poses the threat. Were ours a parliamentary democracy, the standoff could be broken by dissolving parliament and holding new elections. But in our system, Obama can either capitulate and let the GOP get away with a hold-up of democracy, or stand firm until the next election, accepting the resulting damage to the country.
Had the members of the Constitutional Convention imagined what is happening now, they might have foregone fixed terms of office. Instead, they provided a structure for governing that functions smoothly only when men of good will on both sides of the aisle make serious, sincere efforts to work together for the good of the nation. When Barack Obama was elected President, Republican good will vanished, replaced by a nihilistic determination to bring down the president regardless of the cost to the nation.
If the Republicans win, fill your pantry and hoard your money. You’ll need both in the coming chaos.