Only In America - Government Shut Downs

By: Kris Mead

In 1862 Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia faced a budget impasse with the Landtag, the elected general assembly of Prussia. The opposition was over Wihelm’s request to increase the military budget so that the military may be expanded by 50,000 troops, annual recruit quotas increased, and the most controversial issue, maintain the mandatory requirement for military service at three years. In short, Prussia’s government was shut down until this impasse was resolved. More importantly, this would be Germany’s last noticeable governmental shut down.  However, America, which would advise Germany on its postwar World War II constitution, has had 20 governmental shutdowns since 1976.

So as America enters the 27^th day of its longest government shutdown, the obvious question is why does the richest, most powerful country in the world, fail, repeatedly, to pass a federal budget? There are three reasons.

First America’s democracy is run as a republic in which the people elect both a separate executive and legislature. This governmental style causes a higher need for compromise, as both branches may decline a governmental budget proposal, without immediate detrimental political effects to themselves. In the United Kingdom, and other countries run via the Westminster-parliamentary system, a failure for parliament to pass a budget spurs a no confidence vote.  This in turn may cause the ruling party’s leader, who usually is the country’s prime minister, to lose the power. In Australia, if the government cannot pass a budget, the government must resign, and new elections are held. In effect this causes greater pressure on the ruling party and its leader to come to a budget resolution in a timely manner. Another issue is that in these Westminster style governments only require an absolute majority, over fifty percent, to pass a budget bill. In America, a super-majority (two-thirds of both houses of the legislature) is required to pass a budget bill. Therefore if a parliamentary style government can’t pass a budget bill, it would imply that the majority party is having its own squabbles.  However, in America it requires both parties to come to an agreement over the budget, which means that compromise is an absolute necessity.

Second, America’s constitution and laws have inhibited the leader of the free world from overcoming an epidemic that has become uniquely American.  In 2010 and 2011, Belgium was without a government for 589 days. However, the government was not shutdown. This is because, and in like most European countries, when a budget is unable to be agreed upon, the previous budget remains in place and so federal government employees still go to work and still receive pay. So new investments would not be funded but everything prior to the date the new budget was to be instituted would remain in place. America’s agencies, and as reported in The Economist, prior to 1980, would “often operate during funding gaps.” The federal agencies would operate under the assumption that the government did not intend to close them, but “merely had not yet gotten around to formally providing their funding.”  In 1980 that method changed as the, then attorney-general, Benjamin Civiletti wrote an opinion that “agencies could [only] avoid violating the Antideficiency Act. . .is to cease operating until Congress funds them . . ..” The Antideficiency Act, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “ [p]rohibits federal agencies from obligations or expending funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation. . ..” The law was enacted under Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 after the Naval Office spent double its appropriated budget, but was not seriously acted upon until Civiletti’s opinion was issued. That opinion would cause the U.S. government the exclusive right to essentially take hostage of the American people, with little or no consequence to the politicians who were unable to come to a compromise.

The third issue, and the most volatile, is the fact that America has elected a populist, transactional, and unfortunately, naïve, president in Donald Trump. In mid-December, Trump was planning on signing a new spending bill but he was haunted by two figures – Fox News and himself. Trump, in his 2016 presidential campaign, promised his voters that he would build a wall on the border of Mexico. Trump, like he typically does, went further and promised his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall. Then when Trump was to pass a 2019 spending bill that did not provide funding for a border wall, he was called out by far-right wing talking heads such as, Fox News and Ann Coulter. Trump, fearing loss from his diminishing base, dug in his heels and would only pass a spending bill if it included his 5.7 billion dollars for his wall.  The Democrats, who have regained the majority in the House due to many voters concerned about Trump’s nativist policies, which includes the wall, refuse to pass any bill that would allow for 5.7 billion for a wall. In turn, Trump shut down the government, took the American government workers hostage, because he desperately wants to please his xenophobic base.

Trump’s need for a wall is groundless and his negotiation leverage has vastly diminished due to his previous acts and gambles. First, on January 19^th, Trump blinked and provided certain concessions in return for his wall funding. There were two main concessions. The first, as reported by the Washington Post, was that Trump would extend protections to certain immigrants protected under DACA, which protects immigrants who come to America illegally but came when they were children. The second concession was to extend protections for certain refugees who are in America under Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”). TPS gave immigrants who fled from their home countries to America due to natural disasters, wars, or other emergencies certain protections. Trump has attempted to remove protections from these people as well. What is most notable is that Trump has tried to make both policies unlawful and both attempts have been enjoined by federal courts. In turn, the laws stay intact unless the Supreme Court would take them up and overturn the lower courts’ rulings. Ironically, the Supreme Court on Friday signaled that they most likely will not be taking up the cases during this term. In turn, Trump’s concessions are empty as the programs are both still in place due to the lower court’s injunctions.

The second is the fact that illegal immigration is not even a major issue or U.S. problem. Rather Trump has been using Mexico and Latin American immigrants to stir nativist, racist, and xenophobic fears in his base. Trump and his followers refuse to look at the facts and rather be fed lies by the right-wing news outlets such as Fox News. First, Trump argues that illegal immigration at the southwest border is a “crisis,” but that is largely false as the number of boarder apprehensions in the past year were less than a third of what they were in 2000. Second, Trump claims that a wall would “pay for itself” because it would stop the smuggling of drugs. This is again false as the vast majority of illegal drugs smuggled into the U.S. come through legal ports of entry and not through illegal means of entry. So overall the issue at the Mexican border is one of Trump’s many fear mongering tactics, rather than a substantive political issue.

The Democrats are right not to cave into Trump’s allusive “act” of compromise. This is because if Democrats were to cave to Trump, they are essentially allowing Trump to use the American people as a form of hostage for any of his baseless, useless, infeasible policy initiatives. Not only is Trump holding 800,000 Americans and their families’ hostage, but he is also holding the U.S.’s democracy hostage for his own personal and racist policy initiatives. Trump should reopen the government with the plan initially agreed upon. The wall and immigration issue may be discussed when the hostages are released and America’s government is back. Kaiser Wilhelm was able to push through his budget by appointing Otto Von Bismark as his minster, who would in turn, completely ignore the Landstag. America must let Trump know that he cannot dictate by such undiplomatic means.  Apple pie, baseball, and hot dogs are all uniquely American, but just as mass shootings have become so uniquely American, government shutdowns do not need to be the norm either.