Bearing in mind that ~40% of american's could not come up with $400 to cover emergencies, this is going to become more prevalent in the next few days / weeks as people will simply not be able to afford gas to get to their unpaid work. I read an article today discussing how TSA workers in HI are living in their cars in the airport parking lot as they cannot afford to commute. The FBI just cancelled its internship program due to the shutdown.
An administration official recommended that all those affected simply take out loans but unfortunately banks don't lend to people without an income nor to those who have recent delinquencies on their credit due to no income.
I feel very bad for these real people being affected by political showmanship.
I've seen too many people say, "Oh, government workers should all know this stuff happens all the time, and if they don't have months or years of savings in the bank then it's just their fault".
It's really sad that instead of being compassionate, too many are focusing on what "should" be instead of what is the reality for many people. Like you point out, the reality is that most people don't have savings. They should in theory; but life rarely lines up with should.
I too feel terrible for people being hurt by these comparatively wealthy politicians playing games with their livelihood.
On one hand, I understand Ross’ reasoning. If my company were to go to a bank with a federal guarantee, we’d get a very cheap loan.
On the other hand, he thinks an average individual’s response to missing paychecks should be to seek a low interest loan against a government guarantee. That’s comically out of touch. I’ve been working in finance my entire life and I’d have a tough time working through the loan application process.
That’s the type of advice you’d hear a private wealth manager give to his wealthy client. Wealthy people are often asset rich but cash poor so they’ll take out bank loans to finance short term cash flow needs. No doubt Wilbur Ross has availed himself to these services and is shocked that government employees haven’t taken advantage of such conveniences.
If you got to any bank website at least the ones I bank with, there is a flashing notice on the front page, if I were a federal worker who needs assistance due to shut down. I am sure, certain workers have easy ways than others but to say that at least some banks have not stepped up is incorrect.
Some banks are setting up low interest loan programs only for federal employees. They are low interest and are focused on amounts of 2-3 time your paycheck.
Granted the rate things are going that might not be enough.
In many states FBI has run out of replacement tires for vehicles, DNA swab kits, trace evidence filters. FBI can't pay for translator services, etc. They can't pay for informants.
>An administration official recommended that all those affected simply take out loans but unfortunately banks don't lend to people without an income
I think bills have been passed already guaranteeing back pay for federal employees, so it's a bit more complicated than "no income" for federal employees.
However, everyone else who is a contractor or otherwise tangentially dependent on government employment...
And of course getting back pay at some unknown future date doesn't put food on the table now or keep you from losing your house or car.
This is unrelated, but you cannot live your life (in a happy way) being broke virtually all the time. If you are having major problem because a paycheck is missing, you are broke. Very few escape the trap, even if your salary increases, your expenses do too. Not a way to live.
If another person had suggested to get a loan it would have seem more reasonable. You lose a couple of hundred or maybe tens of dollars but at least you get the rest. However, having a billionaire, labeled as out of touch, and presumably teams of lawyers that do his loan paperwork say that...
Not to mention contractors. Plus restaurants and other services near federal buildings that the workers use. If people aren't working they aren't going to dry clean suits or go to lunch for example. Those people aren't getting loans.
It seems like this will have far-reaching consequences for the government's ability to hire, too. They don't have the ability to promise a steady job with steady pay anymore so they're going to have to pay more for labor.
I hope not too off topic, but I'm puzzled by shutdowns.
Every other country I can think of has a system where if the finance is not agreed, the previous budget just continues. The budget sets the yearly amount for each department and it runs on until another budget changes how much everyone gets. Sometimes a new department gets created, sometimes something is abolished. Everyone gets their salary and services run on. Even if the finance bill is defeated, or even if they can't agree a government at all.
So how is it so easy for the US to simply run out? It naively seems like something both sides would want to fix pretty quickly. Is there some unseen advantage doing it this way? From news reports it seems to be all downside.
Largely the US worked this way (there were funding lapses before, but people still worked & were paid), but Jimmy Carter in his infinite wisdom had his attorney general issue guidance that in times of funding lapses, no salaries could be paid. He was tired of some prior shutdowns during his administration and wanted to bring some pain into the picture to force republicans & democrats to sign funding bills & make compromises.
One reason that this happens is that it's effectively designed to happen at this point. In times of split government its effectively impossible to pass legislation, so this is the easiest hostage to take in order to try to extract something from the other side.
The recent interpretations of the anti-deficiency act (https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law-decisions/resou...) means that the government can be shut down unless functions endanger "life" or "property". Congress could amend the anti-deficiency act to fund the government at previous levels, but that would remove the shutdown process as a political cudgel.
Most democracies run a parliamentary system, where the head of government has to have the support of parliament. There's no separation between government/executive from parliament.
The point being that if a prime minister can't reach an agreement with parliament on some core issue (like annual budgets), they cease being the PM. Usually this means a new election.
The US's checks and balances means that parliament and government can be in opposition to eachother, and prevent eachother from doing what they want. The president/government can veto legislation and parliament can de-fund government.
This current manifestation is an odd one because the President is de-funding government, which is de-funding his own stuff. This is because the convention of "shutdown" already existed.
The practical politics of it is that there is one party that's become ideologically opposed to all non-military Federal spending. From their point of view the automatic shutdown is a feature.
I believe (and I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong) but the Anti-Deficiency act [0] is what is causing most of the issues. It specifically forbades going over the budget allocated by congress and has ramifications if it does. In general, the shutdown affects mostly non-essential federal workers, but part of that is their pay, so the offices that pay the necessary workers are not issuing checks...
But, let's be clear, this isn't the government running out of money, it's the government not agreeing on how to spend the money it has.
It's actually all bureaucracy and generally the budget bills are mostly simple continuances of the former... however, in recent years, this has become a game of chicken with legislatures. They are using federal pay as a pawn in negotiations to get their pet projects passed.
In this particular case, instead of going the normal legislative route of passing a bill to allocate funds for the "wall" trump has both inflicted harm on federal workers and DACA recipients in order to coerce the legislative body to fund 5.7 billion in the wall. How did he do this? He first rescinded protections for a group of people and then vetoed a normal budget bill.
In my opinion, the US can afford to do that. Both because it has big control over its population; and that people are relatively wealthy and banks are happy to help. Try that in another country and you'll very likely get an instant uprising with either salaries paid or the government thrown overnight.
In my country this happen with bus drivers (delayed payment of 1 day) and the drivers went on an instant strike. No pay, no work. It's that bad that for many, no payment means their life halting completely. So you can't afford it.
Some people do not realize how good it is in the USA.
They don't want to stop the harm to citizens, because then they can't blame the harm on the other guy. And since they aren't harmed by it in any way, there's no real problem with doing it.
> Every other country I can think of has a system where if the finance is not agreed, the previous budget just continues
That's called a continuing resolution. And in the USA, Trump defeated it December 2018.
They don't want a continuing resolution, so it doesn't happen. Its about that simple. Lawmakers can write the law however they want. Why would the Republicans decide to shoot down the CR this time? Politics.
To be fair: Democrats filibustered the CR in 2018 as well, which led to a short shutdown earlier in the year.
It absolutely is easy for the US to fix. In fact I would go so far as to say the only way for this to occur is a concerted effort of bullshit over decades. Firstly, shutdowns didn't used to occur, it used to be that agencies would just operate as usual on the assumption that if nothing new were passed then the previous budget should stay in place. Then the AG under Carter decided to imaginatively re-interpret the existing laws (read: Couldn't actually get legislation passed to implement this) to say that anything not specifically funded by congress is defunded (except for whatever the president happens to consider expedient at the time like the police force and the army, except not all of the army, like the coast guard because reasons).
THEN rather than Congress passing legislation to say "If nothing else just always stay at past funding levels" Congress instead decided this was a great political tool to whack each other of the head with to negotiate new budgets.
At any point the government could just re-open. The reason shut downs happen is because both the Republicans and Democrats think it's in their favour politically for a shutdown to exist. In this case: Trump thinks he can make the case that we need funding for a border wall (despite controlling all branches of government for part of this shutdown) and that democrats will fold because they don't like dysfunction. Democrats think both that: they can't fold on the border wall because it legitimizes the Republicans using the shutdown to leverage whatever they want, and the border wall is unpopular so a longer shutdown just damages trump more and more.
The only way this resolves is for one group to become so unpopular they fold, or for Trump to shred the constitution and spend the money despite not having the authority (the so called 'State of Emergency' powers)
My understanding as an outsider is that I think the problem is with the debt ceiling. Legally the president (who proposes the budget) needs approval from Congress to borrow beyond the debt ceiling. The US government has for quite some time run a budget deficit, so the only budget that can apply would be a budget with significant cuts in government spending. As such, even keeping the existing budget ticking would exceed the debt ceiling.
To supporters of one of the parties, this is the point. They want the government to run a balanced budget and this is a way of holding it to account. This is also why the debt ceiling can not be removed or extended enough to not become an annual issue.
To both parties, this is a useful tool to hold over an opposing president. Currently, if one party controls Congress and it is not the president, they still don't have too many options short of impeachment to reign a president in.
Additionally, a congress vote is not enough here, the president needs to sign it in, which is how Trump is able to use the mechanism to demand his wall gets funded here.
On the other hand, in most Westminster inspired systems, failure to pass a budget triggers a new election. And the executive power to not sign in a bill usually has much more strings attached. So this deadlock cannot occur.
It gets even better because we have the fights over budgeting of the money. But when it comes time to actually pay for the things that were budgeted we get to have the same fight again.
This is so broken. The terrorists have taken over our government.
Really, every other country? Even Somalia, North Korea, or Venezuela?
I find that often when people criticize the US by saying "no other country has this problem!" they are mainly thinking of parliamentary democracies in Western Europe.
It's true that the US system doesn't function as well as most European countries. It functions better than most countries in the world.
Countries are on a spectrum of institutional competence from roughly Venezuela to Iceland. The US is somewhere in the interior of this spectrum, and not on one of its endpoints. I'm not sure why people find this so incredibly surprising. Do people just think that because the US is wealthy and powerful, it somehow "ought to" rival Western Europe on every other index of development?
That simply isn't the case -- the US is deeply dysfunctional in many ways and should be thought of in comparison with other deeply dysfunctional countries. Somebody can't "just" decide to fix its problems overnight.
First off, the FAA should be privatized like it is in Canada and other countries, then it would not be beholden to a non customer.
Second shut downs are structured as they are because Congress does not like the check and balances the Constitution tried to establish between branches of government.
By making shut downs painful on the public, the employees of the government to include its soldiers, they can force a President to accept whatever budget they come up with. There is no line item veto, Congress would never dare give up that power. So it comes down to putting sufficient pressure on any Administration so they understand who is boss.
They simply ran into someone who could call their game and honestly its the best result ever. We worry all the time about Administration overreach in this country with each change in whom is elected but the real overreach has always been the US Congress. The two parties do everything in their power to keep the game to themselves which means making it nigh impossible for anyone but them to change the rules.
Even without the shutdown, the U.S. air traffic control system may experience greater strain in the years to come due to a generational deficit in the number of new air traffic controllers being trained and staffed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryncreedy/2016/01/28/contro...
I’m glad to see this. The shutdown has been too “business as usual” for most Americans, while others are expected to work without pay, which is ridiculous.
Federal workers should start striking. I gather that in most cases they're explicitly prevented from striking, but I think there's a good chance that it's too unpopular to actually punish them.
At the risk of introducing a political topic into this supposedly apolitical subject, why shouldn't any president simply make demands and then shut down the government until his/her political opponents cave? Seemingly this strategy will not work ever again for either party if proper steps are taken. It seems like a terrible abuse of executive power.
Seems like it’s just delays rather than a full stoppage.
From Newsweek:
‘Flights arriving into LaGuardia Airport were delayed by about 41 minutes as of 10:15 a.m. EST and gate hold and taxi delays were between 15 and 29 minutes, although FAA said it was decreasing. Arrival traffic was experiencing airborne delays of 15 minutes or less.‘
Much hand-wringing is being done by well-meaning moderates and centrists here, blaming both the President and Congress, wondering why our system allows for this to happen, expressing solidarity with the furloughed workers. At least the right questions are being asked.
But the fact is that for this to end any time soon, the equivocating masses trying to stay on the sidelines, saying "oh those darned politicians...", are going to have to choose a side. The hardliners on both sides (the people who vote most often) view compromise as unacceptable, so their representatives are going to sit on their hands and vote down bill after bill.
The choice is not between building a wall or not - it is about whether we allow individual actors to use the functioning of the federal government as leverage in political negotiation. It would be the same if Democrats in the House said, "we won't pass a funding bill unless it includes universal healthcare. If you don't agree, you're shutting the government down." Absurd. Continuing government funding with no strings attached is an apolitical opinion, and it's time for centrists to speak up.
I believe paychecks were due today. Missing two paychecks can be very painful for a lot of people. I would expect things to cascade pretty quickly from this point.
Interesting thing I discovered when I was concerned about SFO delays is that SFO is one of the few airports in the U.S. that does not use TSA for security...it hires its own private security officers.
On February 7th, myself and my co-workers are supposed to travel half way across the country for a major sales-call/meeting. But if the shutdown is still happening, there is no amount of money that would tempt me to get on that plane. Stuff like this worries me:
"The delays come one day after a stark warning was issued by air industry unions about the risk to public safety. "In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break," air traffic, pilot and flight attendant union leaders said in a joint statement."
I can't be the only who feels this way, and the longer the shutdown goes on, the more people are likely to be worried about air travel.
In the short term you might think my company will suffer because of a lost sales opportunity, and that is strictly our loss. But if it happens to enough companies, then it is going to hit the general economy.
Working on major projects means long lead times. The sales that are not being closed this quarter are going to show up as less economic activity in the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
Unless the shut down ends immediately, it seems likely this will have medium-term or long-term consequences.
Why can't the ATC adopt a funding model like the USPS so they don't have this problem in the future relying on appropriations. Can they basically charge airlines and other traffic for their services to fund the operations. I'm mostly curious if this is actually realistic.
Am I the only one who thinks that air traffic controllers and the airport security personnel hold the key to the shutdown? If airports close down, the shutdown will have to stop immediately, the damage to the economy would be so catastrophic not even Republicans could ignore it.
There's no way the federal shutdown lasts too much longer. The heat is on and too many people feel the hurt now, especially in a place like New York. If I were a betting man, I'd say 3-4 days max.
When material damage begins to occur to US businesses their first call will be to certain Senators. Imagine Fedex with no flights, Disneyworld with no guests, Prime with no deliveries. It's a massive disaster in the making with lots of ripple effects. Even the mail won't move except by truck.
As of approximately 15 minutes ago the LGA ground stop has been replaced with a ground delay. There are still ground delay programs in effect at PHL and EWR.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|7 years ago|reply
An administration official recommended that all those affected simply take out loans but unfortunately banks don't lend to people without an income nor to those who have recent delinquencies on their credit due to no income.
I feel very bad for these real people being affected by political showmanship.
[+] [-] tibbon|7 years ago|reply
It's really sad that instead of being compassionate, too many are focusing on what "should" be instead of what is the reality for many people. Like you point out, the reality is that most people don't have savings. They should in theory; but life rarely lines up with should.
I too feel terrible for people being hurt by these comparatively wealthy politicians playing games with their livelihood.
[+] [-] howlingfantods|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand, he thinks an average individual’s response to missing paychecks should be to seek a low interest loan against a government guarantee. That’s comically out of touch. I’ve been working in finance my entire life and I’d have a tough time working through the loan application process.
That’s the type of advice you’d hear a private wealth manager give to his wealthy client. Wealthy people are often asset rich but cash poor so they’ll take out bank loans to finance short term cash flow needs. No doubt Wilbur Ross has availed himself to these services and is shocked that government employees haven’t taken advantage of such conveniences.
[+] [-] sremani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr337|7 years ago|reply
Granted the rate things are going that might not be enough.
[+] [-] naval-gazer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|7 years ago|reply
that official is the billionaire Wilbur Ross. A historic precedent comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake .
[+] [-] cr1895|7 years ago|reply
I think bills have been passed already guaranteeing back pay for federal employees, so it's a bit more complicated than "no income" for federal employees.
However, everyone else who is a contractor or otherwise tangentially dependent on government employment...
And of course getting back pay at some unknown future date doesn't put food on the table now or keep you from losing your house or car.
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|7 years ago|reply
If another person had suggested to get a loan it would have seem more reasonable. You lose a couple of hundred or maybe tens of dollars but at least you get the rest. However, having a billionaire, labeled as out of touch, and presumably teams of lawyers that do his loan paperwork say that...
[+] [-] tvanantwerp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurailious|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loeg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisukaj|7 years ago|reply
So not only are they not getting paid now, but they should also pay loan interests once their pay goes in.
[+] [-] base698|7 years ago|reply
It's hard to imagine not having savings if you make that much. It's possible of course just harder than the general population.
[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|7 years ago|reply
Every other country I can think of has a system where if the finance is not agreed, the previous budget just continues. The budget sets the yearly amount for each department and it runs on until another budget changes how much everyone gets. Sometimes a new department gets created, sometimes something is abolished. Everyone gets their salary and services run on. Even if the finance bill is defeated, or even if they can't agree a government at all.
So how is it so easy for the US to simply run out? It naively seems like something both sides would want to fix pretty quickly. Is there some unseen advantage doing it this way? From news reports it seems to be all downside.
Edit: Thanks for the enlightenment!
[+] [-] awinder|7 years ago|reply
Mark Warner & Tim Kaine are pushing an act that would institute that continuing resolution behavior, appropriately called the Stop STUPIDITY Act https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-mark-warner-intr...
One reason that this happens is that it's effectively designed to happen at this point. In times of split government its effectively impossible to pass legislation, so this is the easiest hostage to take in order to try to extract something from the other side.
[+] [-] whorleater|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
The point being that if a prime minister can't reach an agreement with parliament on some core issue (like annual budgets), they cease being the PM. Usually this means a new election.
The US's checks and balances means that parliament and government can be in opposition to eachother, and prevent eachother from doing what they want. The president/government can veto legislation and parliament can de-fund government.
This current manifestation is an odd one because the President is de-funding government, which is de-funding his own stuff. This is because the convention of "shutdown" already existed.
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
The practical politics of it is that there is one party that's become ideologically opposed to all non-military Federal spending. From their point of view the automatic shutdown is a feature.
[+] [-] chewbacha|7 years ago|reply
But, let's be clear, this isn't the government running out of money, it's the government not agreeing on how to spend the money it has.
It's actually all bureaucracy and generally the budget bills are mostly simple continuances of the former... however, in recent years, this has become a game of chicken with legislatures. They are using federal pay as a pawn in negotiations to get their pet projects passed.
In this particular case, instead of going the normal legislative route of passing a bill to allocate funds for the "wall" trump has both inflicted harm on federal workers and DACA recipients in order to coerce the legislative body to fund 5.7 billion in the wall. How did he do this? He first rescinded protections for a group of people and then vetoed a normal budget bill.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act
[+] [-] lazyant|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|7 years ago|reply
In my country this happen with bus drivers (delayed payment of 1 day) and the drivers went on an instant strike. No pay, no work. It's that bad that for many, no payment means their life halting completely. So you can't afford it.
Some people do not realize how good it is in the USA.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mabbo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdellinger|7 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/KIbkoop4AYE
(CGP Grey's "The Debt Limit Explained")
[+] [-] dragontamer|7 years ago|reply
That's called a continuing resolution. And in the USA, Trump defeated it December 2018.
They don't want a continuing resolution, so it doesn't happen. Its about that simple. Lawmakers can write the law however they want. Why would the Republicans decide to shoot down the CR this time? Politics.
To be fair: Democrats filibustered the CR in 2018 as well, which led to a short shutdown earlier in the year.
[+] [-] Traster|7 years ago|reply
THEN rather than Congress passing legislation to say "If nothing else just always stay at past funding levels" Congress instead decided this was a great political tool to whack each other of the head with to negotiate new budgets.
At any point the government could just re-open. The reason shut downs happen is because both the Republicans and Democrats think it's in their favour politically for a shutdown to exist. In this case: Trump thinks he can make the case that we need funding for a border wall (despite controlling all branches of government for part of this shutdown) and that democrats will fold because they don't like dysfunction. Democrats think both that: they can't fold on the border wall because it legitimizes the Republicans using the shutdown to leverage whatever they want, and the border wall is unpopular so a longer shutdown just damages trump more and more.
The only way this resolves is for one group to become so unpopular they fold, or for Trump to shred the constitution and spend the money despite not having the authority (the so called 'State of Emergency' powers)
[+] [-] Macha|7 years ago|reply
To supporters of one of the parties, this is the point. They want the government to run a balanced budget and this is a way of holding it to account. This is also why the debt ceiling can not be removed or extended enough to not become an annual issue.
To both parties, this is a useful tool to hold over an opposing president. Currently, if one party controls Congress and it is not the president, they still don't have too many options short of impeachment to reign a president in.
Additionally, a congress vote is not enough here, the president needs to sign it in, which is how Trump is able to use the mechanism to demand his wall gets funded here.
On the other hand, in most Westminster inspired systems, failure to pass a budget triggers a new election. And the executive power to not sign in a bill usually has much more strings attached. So this deadlock cannot occur.
[+] [-] sixothree|7 years ago|reply
This is so broken. The terrorists have taken over our government.
[+] [-] umanwizard|7 years ago|reply
I find that often when people criticize the US by saying "no other country has this problem!" they are mainly thinking of parliamentary democracies in Western Europe.
It's true that the US system doesn't function as well as most European countries. It functions better than most countries in the world.
Countries are on a spectrum of institutional competence from roughly Venezuela to Iceland. The US is somewhere in the interior of this spectrum, and not on one of its endpoints. I'm not sure why people find this so incredibly surprising. Do people just think that because the US is wealthy and powerful, it somehow "ought to" rival Western Europe on every other index of development?
That simply isn't the case -- the US is deeply dysfunctional in many ways and should be thought of in comparison with other deeply dysfunctional countries. Somebody can't "just" decide to fix its problems overnight.
[+] [-] Shivetya|7 years ago|reply
Second shut downs are structured as they are because Congress does not like the check and balances the Constitution tried to establish between branches of government.
By making shut downs painful on the public, the employees of the government to include its soldiers, they can force a President to accept whatever budget they come up with. There is no line item veto, Congress would never dare give up that power. So it comes down to putting sufficient pressure on any Administration so they understand who is boss.
They simply ran into someone who could call their game and honestly its the best result ever. We worry all the time about Administration overreach in this country with each change in whom is elected but the real overreach has always been the US Congress. The two parties do everything in their power to keep the game to themselves which means making it nigh impossible for anyone but them to change the rules.
[+] [-] yingw787|7 years ago|reply
This may have been an issue with Reagan firing all members of PATCO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
Whereas before, sufficient military air traffic controllers were willing and able to take on the job, today there is no such reserve.
One book I read recently on the topic of arbitraging the social trust was "The Fifth Risk"; it's a good read. https://smile.amazon.com/Fifth-Risk-Michael-Lewis/dp/1324002...
[+] [-] rkochman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mayneack|7 years ago|reply
Also yesterday some leadership of the flight attendants union called for a general strike until it was over: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/could-an-unlikely-av...
[+] [-] resters|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howlingfantods|7 years ago|reply
From Newsweek: ‘Flights arriving into LaGuardia Airport were delayed by about 41 minutes as of 10:15 a.m. EST and gate hold and taxi delays were between 15 and 29 minutes, although FAA said it was decreasing. Arrival traffic was experiencing airborne delays of 15 minutes or less.‘
Regardless, US scoring a lot of own goals here.
[+] [-] throwaway5752|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plaidfuji|7 years ago|reply
But the fact is that for this to end any time soon, the equivocating masses trying to stay on the sidelines, saying "oh those darned politicians...", are going to have to choose a side. The hardliners on both sides (the people who vote most often) view compromise as unacceptable, so their representatives are going to sit on their hands and vote down bill after bill.
The choice is not between building a wall or not - it is about whether we allow individual actors to use the functioning of the federal government as leverage in political negotiation. It would be the same if Democrats in the House said, "we won't pass a funding bill unless it includes universal healthcare. If you don't agree, you're shutting the government down." Absurd. Continuing government funding with no strings attached is an apolitical opinion, and it's time for centrists to speak up.
[+] [-] mikenew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawhizkid|7 years ago|reply
Edit: For those curious, these airports have private security (SFO is by far the largest as far as I can tell): https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/screening-partnerships
[+] [-] lkrubner|7 years ago|reply
"The delays come one day after a stark warning was issued by air industry unions about the risk to public safety. "In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break," air traffic, pilot and flight attendant union leaders said in a joint statement."
I can't be the only who feels this way, and the longer the shutdown goes on, the more people are likely to be worried about air travel.
In the short term you might think my company will suffer because of a lost sales opportunity, and that is strictly our loss. But if it happens to enough companies, then it is going to hit the general economy.
Working on major projects means long lead times. The sales that are not being closed this quarter are going to show up as less economic activity in the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
Unless the shut down ends immediately, it seems likely this will have medium-term or long-term consequences.
[+] [-] s0rce|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dentemple|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandare|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neolander|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mitchell_h|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anant90|7 years ago|reply