How Boehner Brought About The Government Shutdown
Up until now, a government shutdown because of a stalemate over the budget was a strong possibility, but it didn’t appear inevitable. That’s because House Speaker John Boehner stands to be badly hurt by the train wreck a shutdown would be, and I’m confident—from what he’s said and because he was around the last time it happened—that he realizes it. But his decision last week during House consideration of the must-pass spending bill to open up the floor to unlimited amendments reframed the issue in a way that gives Boehner much less room for compromise.
Just to recap the mechanics here: The Democrats last year (inexplicably) failed to pass the appropriations bills that would keep the government running through the current fiscal year, opting instead to pass a temporary measure that runs out on March 4. Unlike the debt ceiling, this one is a hard deadline. If Congress and the president don’t act, the government will shut down. National parks will close; most federal employees and most of the vast hordes of government contractors won’t get paid for the duration of the shutdown; and applications for visas, passports, Social Security, and veterans’ benefits won’t get processed. A few days of that is an inconvenience. A couple of weeks, as Republicans found out in the mid-’90s, is a disaster.