Tag: Shutdown

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TSA agents are no longer being paid due to a partial government shutdown. This is ridiculous. Really ridiculous.

First government shutdowns are ridiculous to being with. Taxes are being paid. There is money to pay them because, if there was no government shutdown, they would be paid. It is an accounting problem. Members of Congress are being paid. Since members of Congress are government employees and they continue to get their paycheck, there must be some accounting trick that makes this possible. Why not use this same trick with TSA agents.

I would argue that TSA agents are actually more essential to public safety than members of Congress. Millions of people travel by plane every day. Even I go to the airport on occasion and in order to board a plane I must go through TSA to get there. This matters to me.

On the other hand, I can’t tell you the last time I needed a member of Congress to do, well, anything. I think it is safe to say never. It would seem that the government would prioritize the TSA agents’ paychecks over, how shall I say this politely, unnecessary government employees like members of Congress.

It is down right irritating that Airports are begging for money in order to help TSA agents through this shutdown. I get that they are just trying to help out people who are having a hard time through no fault of their own. Yeah for their good intentions but this is a very bad idea and fails spectacularly to deal with the real problem — the ongoing congressional stalemate regarding budgets.

Trying to help these people through private charity only encourages Congress to continue in their intransigence. Why settle now when we can hold out longer to potentially gain the upper hand? Right. I can’t remember a time that this has happened but OK, hope springs eternal. The food banks and the gift cards only delay the inevitable, why not just cut to the chase.

Holding people’s paychecks hostage in order to get your way on something that you don’t have the votes for in Congress is quite simply wrong. The idea is that the Republicans will be shamed into giving into the Democrats. I’m sorry to say, I don’t think the Republican Party is capable of shame. So holding out for a win here is pointless. The party in the minority never gets their way and the only thing that really happens is a lot of hard working people are inconvenienced.

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The above question is the problem. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Compromise, or at least as I understand the word compromise, requires that both sides give a little and take a little. Both sides get something out of the deal. That’s why they call it compromise.

The nightly breathless reporting of who is winning and who is losing the shutdown makes compromising extremely difficult particularly in the present circumstances. Trump needs to look like a winner and the Democrats are trying to look like fighters. Neither wants to look like a loser so all pretense of looking for a compromise has been abandoned because there is a battle going on and somebody has to win.

American democracy, unlike most other democratic countries, depends greatly on compromise due to the cumbersome federal system our forefathers created. There has to be a general agreement across an executive, two legislature bodies (one of which requires a supra majority) and the Supreme Court. It is extremely difficult to get things done through this system even in the best of times. These are not the best of times.

It is clear that it isn’t in the best interest of the press for there to be a compromise between the two parties. Indeed compromise is decidedly boring and unlikely to engage the press who prefer mudslinging, name calling and they particularly like winners and losers. Because the press needs to have winners and losers, they are framing the present struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats in the most unhelpful way. The press wants one side to succumb to a more powerful winning side who will then stand on the loser’s lifeless body and gloat for even more good press. All anybody wants to know who is winning the shutdown

Well, sadly — no one.