January 29, 2019
As federal workers streamed backed into their offices yesterday, on the first Monday after the entirely avoidable disaster of a 35 day government shutdown, people everywhere were busily trying to quantify the damage. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the shutdown led to $11 billion dollars in economic losses, $3 billion of which would never be recovered, (Source: “CBO: Shutdown cost economy $3 billion,” by Niv Ellis, TheHill.com, 1/28/19).
Elsewhere, pundits and pollsters were calculating the loss in terms of the drop in Trump and the Republican Congressional members’ poll numbers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll found the shutdown had driven Trump’s disapproval ratings to an all time high, at 57%, and that nearly the same percentage blamed Congressional Republicans rather than Democrats. A CBS poll found that 70% of voters did not think a wall was worth shutting down the government. Most importantly, Trump has lost ground with key components of his base: suburban men, white evangelicals and men without a college degree, (Source: “The Shutdown Leaves Trump’s Base Cracked,” by David Graham, TheAtlantic.com, 1/26/19). We may have finally reached the point at which people’s economic self-interest outweighs their racism.
Yet, notwithstanding the very real economic and political damage that the shutdown caused, Trump has given every indication that he is willing to entertain another one in twenty one days, if Congress doesn’t reach a deal that includes funding for a border wall. Trump tweeted on Friday that if he didn’t get his way at the end of the three week period, it’s “off to the races,” a sentiment echoed by his coterie of hacks, (Source: “The White House isn’t ruling out another shutdown,” by Kathryn Watson, CBSNews.com, 1/28/19).
The unfortunate fact is that Trump and his advisors are operating by a different calculus than we are, where devastating financial losses and even declining poll numbers pale in comparison to what Trump stands to gain from another shutdown. For one thing, it will dominate the news coverage, crowding out new development in the Mueller investigation. It will also shrink the column inches dedicated to ongoing damage caused by his governing philosophy of targeted bigotry, such as the child separation at the border or the numerous policies designed to hurt transgender people.
If we are (justifiably) worrying about the cascading harm being caused by a shuttered federal government, we will take our eyes off of the fact that the administration separated “thousands more” migrant children from their parents at the border than the almost 3000 already reported, (Source: “Family Separation May Have Hit Thousands More Migrant Children Than Reported,” by Miriam Jordan, The New York Times, 1/17/19). If we are consumed by stories of federal workers at food pantries or foregoing insulin because of a renewed shutdown, we will not focus on the cruel impact of the transgender military ban or the withdrawal of protections for transgender students in public schools, decisions that, like the wall, were made in order to shore up political support with a bigoted base (Source: “Trump’s ban on transgender troops, explained,” by German Lopez, Vox.com, 1/22/19).
Thus, as we calculate the “cost” of the shutdown, tallying up dollars and cents and lost points in tracking polls, we would do well to remember who is really paying the cost. Otherwise, we risk being people who, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
#Impeach
#NoWall