#323: Did Sanity Prevail? Government Shutdowns Still Make No Sense

Sometimes sanity wins. This government shutdown was a mistake from day one. Thankfully, the end of this dangerous tactic is near. Hopefully now maybe the midterms can motivate both parties to do something about the rising cost of everything without holding the people hostage again.

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I am well aware that this was and is a contentious issue, but this was predictable. You cannot create complex policy through extortion, especially given that the Republican party still believes in small government. Who thought this could have been won?

The Democrats who voted to stop the shutdown realized that causing pain for people is not helpful. It does not matter who caused the pain. It does not matter who caused the shutdown, but it matters now who is coming out against ending it. Those Democrats who now complain about it ending appear now to reveal that they were to blame for the shutdown in the beginning. That’s not a good picture.

Now, I do believe that the Democratic Party had indeed sensible goals. Subsidies are expiring. Healthcare is a mess. It is too expensive. And it is about to get more expensive and less available. But you can be right on the issue and still wrong on the methodology because it matters not only what you fight for, it matters how you fight. You need to know your opponent. You need to know what your opponent is willing to let happen.

You cannot even pretend to serve the people while claiming it is for health care while SNAP benefits are expiring and people will be hungry. While federal workers go without pay and even military and veteran payments have been affected. Flights are affected at the beginning of the holiday season. This is all utterly stupid. This is utterly punitive, unnecessarily so, and it only contributes to the perception that Congress as a whole is to blame.

This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is not a partisan issue. It is about how you fight and what collateral damage you’re willing to cause. And if this kind of collateral damage aligns with your party philosophy at the moment, you can keep this game going longer. If it doesn’t align with your party’s philosophy, then you should end it and fight another way.

All that was achieved was suffering and the wrong methods discredit the overarching aim. And we all know clearly that healthcare is complex and there are no simple solutions. There is no obvious fix. Look abroad. Everywhere costs are rising.

If you like the British system, people in Britain voted for Brexit because they thought it would benefit their health care system. I know that in Germany, health care costs are rising. I know that many Canadians are not necessarily happy with the quality of the care. If you look at the United States, where do you have universal healthcare? You have Veterans Care and the Indian Health Service. None of these programs are running in a way that they should.

And when you have countries with better working health care, you have a completely different tax and incentive structure. Yes, personally I feel the German system works better, but Germany also has deep economic and structural problems. It’s not as dynamic as the United States. And you can’t just pick and choose single things from one system to the other. You have to look at the whole.

So whatever we need to do is complex. Yes, we could have prolonged the subsidies and then negotiate, but that just would have pushed the problem down the line. What doesn’t work is hostage style negotiations. Again, especially not with a party that still tends to believe that government is the problem.

But demonizing Obamacare does not work either. Now, we can only hope that sensible negotiations can start to make healthcare affordable and available to all. If not, there are midterms next year. This is what can be pushed.

Yeah, I’m sure that it would help more if Democrats kept reminding Republicans that this is a core issue and you work towards the midterms and that doesn’t mean that we have to wait for policy solutions that would have to kick in. Everything is too expensive right now. We need to create solutions now. And this would be both in the Democrat and Republican interest.

The government needs to go back to work now. Shutdowns are pointless. Let’s stop this nonsense. Politics is there to solve problems and we need both parties to function.