Hicks
The United States is plowing headlong into another government shutdown, the 15th since the 1980 court ruling that government agencies didn’t have the authority to operate during a shutdown. I have a dim view of these events, in part because I’ve been caught up in several of them. They tend to be unhelpful to the budget process, aside from one important feature. Shutdowns put on full display the seriousness of the competing arguments. This helps voters take notice.
The first few shutdowns in the early 1980s spanned a day or two, typically including weekends. These were not especially difficult, despite the federal government workforce being a much larger share of workers than today. In 1981, a full 3.1% of all workers were employed by the federal government; today it is under 1.9%. Congress was controlled by Democrats.
At the time, my father was a federal employee, the type of worker that so many folks in Congress today like to disparage. Because his job was managing the U.S. spy satellite fleet for the Central Intelligence Agency, his work was deemed critical. We live in a different time now, and no doubt there are a few members of Congress who would wish to see that program close.
In the late 1980s the U.S. had four more shutdowns that affected me. As a rifle company executive officer in the Army, I was responsible for feeding 300 soldiers, three times a day. Our civilian-staffed mess halls shut down, forcing us to eat MREs for several days. That was both unpleasant and expensive—field rations are far pricier than the chili-mac we’d normally eat. It seemed so pointless, and made me feel like an irrelevant pawn.
For me, the worst of these shutdowns happened in October 1990, when I was deployed to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. I’d been deployed since the middle of August, living in a desert that soared to 120 degrees daily. I had no tent and was unable to shower or wash either of my two uniforms. We didn’t yet have the water available to do so. As a professional soldier, I wasn’t too bothered by that lifestyle. However, I was appalled by the raw politics of a five-day shutdown. Again, I felt like an insignificant pawn of political games.
I appreciate that we are a great nation, capable of engaging in domestic and international political affairs at the same time. Though this shutdown didn’t affect my otherwise dismal living conditions, it soured me on the unserious nature of politics of the time. The Democrats were widely blamed for that closure, and have not again pushed for a shutdown. They left a bitter taste in my mouth for two decades.
The GOP and Newt Gingrich used a 1995 shutdown to great advantage against Bill Clinton. The reason for its success in policy and politics, is that the GOP had an actual policy platform, the ‘Contract With America.’ One need not admire the contents of this policy document to respect its clarity and ambition. Quite plainly, whatever its flaws, the 1994 Contract With America is to the current GOP platform as the Mona Lisa is to a 3-year-old’s finger painting. And that is libelous to a great many 3-year-olds.
The government shutdowns of the 1980s and 1990s made the Democrats appear unserious, for good reason. Because, bless their hearts, they were. But, recent shutdowns rightly flipped the political narrative. In 2013, a small number of Republicans pushed for a shutdown over provisions of the Affordable Care Act that’d been passed three years earlier. At the time they had no alternative, as they do not today.
The 2013 shutdown lasted 16 days, and the Obama Administration decided to follow the letter of the law. They shut down parks, recreation areas, nearly all government offices and websites. The government came to a screeching halt, allowing Americans to fully grasp what public services they relied upon. There were no Medicare approvals, no VA health visits, no operations at National Parks. We stopped tracking the unemployment rate, and suspended most visa operations. An enormous amount of necessary, but routine activities stopped.
That didn’t fully stop government, since we were at war. The U.S. armed forces continued to fight, and during the shutdown almost 50 American servicemen died, and another 200 were wounded in action. Our spy satellite constellation continued to operate and submarines, our fleet, air crews and embassy guards continued to do their duty. The government of the United States has men and women who continued to do the hard things, with no promise of pay or benefits. I’m not certain we deserve them.
The sacrifices of individual workers ranged from enormous to modest, but they served as good recruiting tools for the Democrats. The 2013 government shutdown was a political disaster for the GOP. They opposed Obamacare, as did I. Like me, they had neither a workable alternative nor votes for any alternative. They still don’t, and that lack of seriousness continues to show.
In 2018, during the Trump administration, the government shut down twice. Once for two, another for 34 days. But, on both occasions, the GOP controlled the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. These shutdowns were not high-stakes conflicts between political parties with different visions of governance. These were disagreements among members of one political party. There remains little agreement about the role or size of government among the GOP. So, it is fair to say that the GOP was broken by a government shutdown in 2013 and has yet to recover. It is clownsmanship, not statesmanship.
We stumble into another shutdown today, forced by a tiny minority of Republicans in a party that struggles to redefine itself. I am deeply sympathetic to many of their individual concerns about the size and composition of our deficit. But, it has been more than a decade since my family and I visited the Capitol and listened to Paul Ryan outline a meaningful budget plan in a floor debate. There’s nothing so serious today.
In 2001, when George W. Bush took office, we had a debt that was 55% of GDP, and collected 12.7% of GDP in taxes. Today, our debt is 117% of GDP, and we collect 10.3% of GDP in taxes. There are reasonable causes of this higher debt. A ‘war on terror’ and a once-in-a-century pandemic necessitate more spending. Not so with taxes.
We can approach this problem like adults and talk through priorities and compromise. After all, in1943 we taxed ourselves at 20.5% of GDP. Times have been much, much worse than what we face now. The difference is that we elected better men and women to high office. Until we do so again, we should expect more shutdowns, bigger deficits, and more volatile politics.
Michael J. Hicks is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Send comments to [email protected].
