BUDAPEST: The so called “government shutdown” ended Monday afternoon after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recognized that the Democrats were paying the price, and would later pay it again at the ballot box. I call it a “so-called” shutdown because the government never really shut down by any true definition. Some paychecks would have been delayed, a few national parks might have temporarily closed, but if it was possible to shut down the government by failing to pass a budget or a continuing resolution, a lot of people would have urged members of Congress to do it a long time ago. Truth is, the federal government has a life of its own. It has grown over the years to become a behemoth, an insatiable perpetual motion machine. I’ve said before that “lawmakers” take that description too literally, and they believe their job is to pass new laws. Congressional scorecards kept by the media often rate Congress poorly based on how few new laws are passed in any given year. It could be argued that the best grade any Congress could receive would be an A-plus for passing the fewest new laws or regulations. With tens of thousands of laws on the books, the most necessary ones for society to function were passed ages ago, and we could go a decade without passing another new one and be no worse off.
More practically, a limit on law-passing might actually make sense. Changing times and circumstances do create the need for at least updating laws or regulations. On average, according to various sources I found, Congress passes about 700 new laws and regulations every two years. A rule stating that Congress could pass no more than five new laws each session might work, forcing Congress and the president to decide what’s really important. But when it comes to the federal government, no one, Republican or Democrat, will allow the beast to go unfed for too long. The longest “government shutdown” in history was 21 days in 1995-96, and most Americans weren’t impacted in any way. Even federal workers eventually received any back pay they did not receive initially. Fears of a prolonged “government shutdown” are always unfounded.
