Year: 2013

A reader writes:

I’m on furlough, and for the first time, I am worried that this might be more than a couple-day affair. And for the first time, I’m worrying about how this is going to impact the household budget, wondering if I might need to apply for unemployment benefits if this lingers on (and just how I go about doing that). But you are right. Obama’s got to hang tough and not give into the thuggery. I so damn sick of hearing the GOP complain about how Obama won’t negotiate. THIS is simply not anything to be negotiated over!

Another sends the above photo:

I know this is a minor inconvenience compared to, say, a federal employee not getting a pay check, but I was LIVID when I drove up to my favorite place to run at the Chatahoochee Recreation area to find it closed. There is some irony that I have to find a new place to exercise because Republicans are unhinged about a healthcare law.

Another reader:

Thank you for publishing that letter from Afghanistan. I also work in a foreign affairs agency that is not DoD, and I am continuing to show up to work (albeit safely in DC). It feels absurd to be showing up to work in an office that supports democracy abroad when our own government is a shambles. This shutdown is defeating and exhausting, especially for civil servants, since Congress shows no interest in or concern for the plight of any non-military federal employee.

Yesterday, all federal employees received a letter from the president:

You do all this in a political climate that, too often in recent years, has treated you like a punching bag. You have endured three years of a Federal pay freeze, harmful sequester cuts, and now, a shutdown of our Government. And yet, you persevere, continuing to serve the American people with passion, professionalism, and skill.

None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealistic Americans to public service that our citizens deserve and that our system of self-government demands.

People of all ideologies rail against The Government as if it is a faceless bureaucracy operated by mindless minions who serve rules and red tape. The reality is, we are made up of people who are enforcing and implementing the very laws that Americans have asked for through their elected officials, from the Iraq war to the Affordable Care Act.

We have rules and processes, because not only are we America’s largest employer, but we have to provide a level of accountability and transparency to the American public that is unheard of in the private sector. And yes, of course there are people and offices that are deadweight and drag us all down. But only an ideologue would ignore the political interests behind most of our poor policy choices, or try to pretend that the private sector doesn’t struggle with poor performers.

Can you imagine if, on a whim, a private company’s board told employees not to show up? And then if that company told its employees they wouldn’t get paid because they weren’t working? Who in the world would want to work there? How would they ever recruit and retain top talent to stay at the top of their field? I cannot imagine having a family and this kind of pay uncertainty, and I cannot believe that Congressional Republicans would so easily throw us under the bus. And yet, here we are.

I am tired of being told that “Washington is broken.”  It can always be better, but Washington is not broken. Congress is broken, and it won’t get better until Americans hold their elected officials accountable. But between gerrymandering and the current campaign finance situation, I’m losing hope.

A rough estimate:

In a research note Tuesday, J.P. Morgan analysts estimated that federal furloughs will reduce national income by a total of $1.3 billion per week. As a result, the shutdown could shave 0.12 percent off fourth quarter GDP growth for each week it goes on. That forecast doesn’t account for any knock-on effects on the private sector or dent in economic confidence, which are harder to quantify.

All that lost income could be recouped if Congress later agrees to give those 770,000 furloughed federal workers back pay. But for now, that’s very much uncertain. Republicans in Congress are split on whether to agree to retroactive pay to workers who get furloughed.

This adorable fuzzball, of course. Why did the plight of the Panda Cam receive so much attention these last few days? Megan Garber suggests it all comes down to office politics: 

When it comes to actually talking about the news – one of the big motivators for news consumption in the first place – coworkers tend to shy away from politically tendentious topics. Which is understandable: The workplace tends to collect people who might otherwise have little in common into close quarters. Why rock the boat? But it’s also a tendency that has significant implications for the kind of news consumption – and news sharing – that people actually do at and from work. The desire to avoid political confrontation, as [communications researcher Pablo] Bocszkowskiput it, “tends to steer people away from the consumption of politically sensitive topics, and move them towards consumption of sports stories, stories celebrity stories — topics that are more innocuous, and lighter in terms of workplace conversations.”

But the need to publicly appear politically neutral also explains the mass appeal of polarizing talk shows:

Discussing politics with your colleagues or neighbors comes with the fear of saying something unacceptable, and subsequently being excluded from the next barbecue or water-cooler conversation. In contrast, “the comfort zones provided by the shows we studied present no such risk,” [sociologist Sarah] Sobieraj and her colleagues write. “In fact, they offer imagined and, in some cases, tangible social connections.”

But why is their pull apparently stronger among conservatives, who gravitate to such programming in much greater numbers than liberals? Based on their interviews, the researchers believe the answer lies in the fact those on the right have more to fear in terms of social condemnation for their views.

(Photo: The giant panda cub born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo August 23 was given a clean bill of health following her first veterinary exam September 16. By Courtney Janney, Smithsonian National Zoological Park)

Torture cheerleader Marc Thiessen gave a lesson on it earlier this week:

I’m all for taking hostages. Both sides do it all the time. But one of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostage the other side cares about saving. Obama and the Democrats don’t care about stopping a government shutdown. … By contrast, when it comes to the debt-limit showdown, they do have leverage; while Obama can let the government close and blame the GOP, he cannot allow the United States to default.

Galupo rightly calls Thiessen a thug. Chait worries that Republicans buy their own spin:

Conservative discourse on the debt ceiling is a chorus of cheering belligerence. I’ve seen no conservatives consider the possibility that Democrats actually believe their stated position, which is that giving in to debt-ceiling extortion would pave the way for endless future extortion and an eventual debt breach. They assert over and over that Democrats will fold, and seem to believe this.

Yglesias urges the president to hold firm:

[F]rom the standpoint of the country as a whole, a debt ceiling breach in 2013 is no more disastrous than a breach in 2017 or 2022. And the problem with “cutting a deal” with Republicans is that it essentially makes an eventual breach inevitable. If the hostage-taking gambit works, then it will be used over and over again until it goes wrong.

And Kilgore hopes Obama will pass a message on to Boehner:

Now I don’t know anything about the president’s relationship with Boehner. But it’s becoming a matter of national security for him to find some way to take him aside, maybe give the Speaker a cigarette from his secret stash, and say: “I will see you in Hell before I negotiate over the debt limit. And if you let a default happen, I will devote the rest of my presidency to making sure you, personally, bear the blame, and go down in history with our most despised traitors and criminals. For generations, little school children in Ohio will cross themselves and make hex signs when your name is mentioned. So do not, do not, go back and tell your crazy people they can win if they just stick together.”