Shutdown is more about politics than budgets

The federal government's shutdown is in its third day today, and the only progress seems to be in the increases in partisan finger-pointing by congressional leaders and the White House. Today's problem is indicative of a much larger, long-range problem with the entire budgeting process, which, as a New York Times article says, is more about partisan sniping than budgeting.

Congress runs into these impasses on a regular basis — annually or more often. The leadership of both parties in Congress appears to be more interested in gaining political advantage than in doing the work they were elected to do. Congress' fundamental responsibility is to pass a budget and appropriate funds for the federal government to operate. In the current environment, this appears to be nearly impossible. 

Political leaders and commentators are more interested in which party is winning the public relations battle than in providing the means for carrying out government functions. Major changes too the budgetary process will be needed to prevent the entire legislative process from dissolving into chaos. Changes have been tried before. I was employed by the federal government in Washington in 1974 when Congress extended the 1973-74 fiscal year to 15 months in order to give congressional committees and leaders more time to pass a budget appropriate funds. Instead of having budgeting and appropriations done by July 1, the traditional end of the fiscal year, Congress would have until Oct. 1 to complete the process. That has worked out really well, hasn't it? 

Let me offer one simple proposal. Pass a law that cancels the salaries and other payments to all members of Congress any time the budget and appropriations bills are not completed by the beginning of the fiscal year, Oct. 1. I think that motivation might be sufficient to get members of Congress to "do something." The cancellation could even be extended to all elected officials, including the president and vice president, who have assumed roles in the budgetary process.

In the current shutdown, Democrats are hoping voters will rise up against President Trump and his party for opposing a permanent solution for the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) immigrants. Republicans are hoping voters will rise up against Democrats' DACA demands while declining Republicans' agreement on a six-year extension of the popular, bipartisan CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program). Democrats call it the Trump Shutdown. Republicans call it the Schumer Shutdown (after the Senate Minority Leader).

If there is no compromise, it appears to me that Republicans will ultimately gain the advantage. Republicans are offering a long-term deal on CHIP, which, they point out, benefits millions of American citizens, while Democrats are holding out for preferential treatment for less than a million (reportedly) resident non-citizens. The issues are more complicated than that, but most voters will not get into the nuances and will only see the broad outlines. On that basis, the Republicans have the more persuasive argument, as well as the catchier slogan: "Schumer Shutdown."

Amtrak tragedies in Philadelphia and Washington

Days after a tragic crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia, the U.S. House voted to cut Amtrak funding by 20 percent. The cut was a knee-jerk reaction, not to the fatal derailment but to the notion that passenger rail service should pay for itself from passenger ticket sales.

But no transportation service pays for itself. The wondrous high-speed rail trains in Europe and Asia are not financed entirely by ticket sales. Those governments recognize that services that are a public good require some taxpayer subsidies to be feasible.

In this country, airlines and personal-vehicle travel are not paid for entirely by individual users. The cars we drive travel on taxpayer-funded roads and highways, and are subsidized by local and federal planning, engineering and bridge projects. Airlines are subsidized by government-paid construction of airports and the use of federal employees in air traffic control plus the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

The dominance of air and personal-vehicle travel in this country did not just happen. It was a deliberate governmental decision to prefer airlines and cars over railways. Other governments have leaned toward advanced railways vs. cars. The interstate highway system that makes longer-distance travel via personal vehicles convenient, fairly comfortable and relatively safe (though not as safe as rail travel) was established by the Eisenhower administration as a military strategy because movement of heavy military equipment across a continent was not efficient on two-lane roads.

The idea that rail travel should be self-supporting ignores the economic realities of all forms of travel, and the cuts imposed in the House budget ignore the not just the convenience of rail passengers but also their safety.

It's a budget negotiation, not a political campaign

On Friday, the law of the land says sequestration begins, imposing across-the-board cuts on federal spending (while leaving some spending categories untouched). Just how bad the consequences will be is being debated by the talking heads of the Democratic and Republican parties, but both parties seem to agree that sequestration is a painful remedy for Congress' inability to match its spending "wants" with its taxation "needs."

Despite this looming deadline, which some economists and President Obama say could be horrific, there is little movement on Capitol Hill to avoid sequestration. Inter-party talks appear to be non-existent. Voices of reason and negotiation are drowned out by partisan rants.

President Obama has been talking a lot about the hazards of sequestration this month, but he's talking to the wrong people. Obama is treating sequestration — and, by extension, the federal budget — as a political issue, not a fiscal responsibility or budgeting issue. He's flying around the country (5,000 miles by one critic's count) urging voters to complain to their congressional representatives. His tactic of trying to shame Congress into action does not appear to be working.

Obama is known to admire President Lincoln and has sometimes invited comparisons to John F. Kennedy. But perhaps he should look to another president, who was skilled at getting things done on Capitol Hill, even if he wasn't as charismatic as Kennedy or as eloquent as Lincoln. Lyndon B. Johnson was the Master of the Senate, who could push legislation through the often paralyzed "World's Greatest Deliberative Body." As majority leader, Johnson enjoyed unparalleled success in controlling the flow of legislation and ensuring that the party's legislative agenda was carried through to success. As president, he worked behind the scenes to persuade members of Congress to approve the legislation he supported.

Johnson realized that popular support is nice to have, but what you really need is 51 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House. Obama would do better if he would leave the campaign soapbox and sit down with congressional leaders to work a deal that will meet the approval of both sides.

I've been reading Robert Caro's magnificent four-volume (with a fifth volume yet to come) biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro's books are not likely to turn the reader into a Johnson fan, but you cannot help but marvel at his legislative skills. Perhaps the books would be good reading for President Obama.

Do nothing and fix the deficit

Here we are less than a week before the deadline for the Supercommittee to come up with $1.2 trillion in budget cuts, or else! Few people in and around Washington are holding out much hope for the partisan committee to agree on cuts that will prevent automatic, across-the-board spending cuts. This column by E.J. Dionne offers a different — and far more effective — solution: Simply let the Bush tax cuts expire and go back to the tax rates in place 11 years ago.

It seems like a different universe but was only just over 10 years ago. The Clinton presidency closed out with a budget surplus and a projection of budget surpluses as far out as budget writers could project. The U.S. Treasury would be flush with money. President George W. Bush pushed a solution to the budget surplus problem: Reduce taxes. His argument was that the government was taking in more money than it needed. Unless taxes and revenues were cut, he argued, Congress would just spend that excess revenue in worthless ways. I admit that I found the argument at least a little appealing at the time.

But guess what — it's no longer early 2001. We no longer have a budget surplus. We have a $1.4 trillion deficit. Even if the Supercommittee succeeds beyond expectations and enacts a $4 trillion budget cut over 10 years, the federal deficit will increase because we'll be cutting only $4 trillion from a 10-year cumulative deficit of at least $14 trillion. Doing nothing — letting the Bush tax cuts expire and tax rates rise to their 1990s level (a time of great economic growth, by the way) — is a far more effective and fairer way to reduce the federal deficit and debt. Yes, it would require sacrifice by all taxpayers, and sacrifice is a word that has disappeared from political discussions, but if we're going to correct our budget mess, we will have to sacrifice, like it or not.

Government shutdown looms again

In less than 18 hours, as I write this, the federal government is expected to go into partial shutdown. The reason: Congress has not passed a budget for the 2011 fiscal year (that's the one we're now halfway through), and the interim spending resolution is expiring. Democrats and Republicans are blaming each other for the impasse, and it appears that a budgetary dispute will lead to a governmental closure for the first time since the Clinton-Gingrich game of chicken in the 1990s.

The thing to remember about this impasse is that it is not about next year's budget. This dispute is over the current fiscal year budget, which began Oct. 1, 2010. This budget should have been passed last summer and should have been in place before Oct. 1. Once this cat fight is out of the way, which it surely will be sooner or later, Congress faces the much more daunting task of passing the budget for FY2012, which begins Oct. 1.

Passing a budget, one can argue, is the primary, fundamental duty of Congress. But Congress has consistently failed to pass budgets on time. Call it attention deficit disorder on a massive scale. Congress can't seem to concentrate on its primary mission — setting a spending plan for the federal government. This is not a new phenomenon. I was on the federal payroll (as a Coast Guard officer) when the federal government changed from a July-June fiscal year to an October-September fiscal year. That year, we worked with a 15-month fiscal year. The extra three months, we were told at the time, would give Congress the additional time it needed to pass a budget on time. Ha!

Last year, when the FY2011 budget should have been passed, Democrats in control of Congress didn't want to pass a budget that could become a political hot potato in the 2010 elections, so they let government slide through a continuing resolution. That strategy didn't work out too well in November. With Republicans now in charge of the House and holding more votes in the Senate, they are determined to use the overdue budget to win ideological points. The year-round campaigning and 24-hour news cycles (which must be fed with controversy day and night) have made any legislative agreement more difficult. But if Congress cannot agree on how to fund the last six months of this fiscal year, how will our representatives ever find common ground to steer a new fiscal course in 2012?

Both sides, it seems to me, would be better off yielding on FY 2011 and saving their energy for the FY2012 fight. Rep. Paul Ryan has already thrown down the gauntlet with a radically different FY2012 budget plan that would fundamentally change Medicare and Medicaid and sharply reduce federal spending. The fight over Ryan's plan and alternatives yet to be revealed will make tonight's threatened government shutdown seem inconsequential. There is a growing consensus that the federal deficit and debt are much too large and must be trimmed. The fight will be over where and how to cut spending and whether to include some tax increases (or sunsetting of tax cuts), as the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission had proposed, in the budgetary solution. The battle over Ryan's plan or some alternative to it could be the political fight of the decade. Both sides should stockpile some ammunition for that fight and not waste it all on today's interim measure.