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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

If the airports remain shut down, the economic cost will quickly balloon to multiples of the $5.7B requested for the wall. It's literally a rounding error in the budget.

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I wouldn't say its a rounding error, it's roughly the budget of the National Science Foundation which seems more sensible than a ...wall

That's one of the things that I find most infuriating. When it comes time to defund something like public broadcasting, it's all supposedly about the cost. When it's time to build a wall, it's a tiny fraction of the budget. We have such whacked priorities.

The 2013 government shutdown cost 0.1%-0.2% of the annualized GDP growth rate per week [1]. If I'm understanding correctly and doing my math right, with a GDP of about 20t $usd and a 3.5% growth rate, that's a 350b-700b $usd reduction in GDP.

[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2013/10/03/closed-un...

It’s not about this line item, it’s about the executive branch ursurping the power of the purse by holding federal workers and huge sectors of our economy ransom. Trump was on national tv saying he’s intentionally doing this for a pet project.

Nobody actually cares about the $5.7 billion dollars, it's chump change for the government. This is all about appearance. The Democrats will lose face if they sign off on a budget which allows him to build his wall, and Trump will lose face if he fails to start building it (presumably in time for the next election).

(It's also notable that neither party, politically, has a good reason to end it. Trump will have a hard time holding onto even his strongest supporters come reelection if he can't start the wall, the most tangible and physical representation of his promises to his base, and the longer the shutdown persists, the better Democrats will do in Congress next election, the shutdown is a political godsend.)

The wall he said Mexico would pay for? Didn't he already lose that face?

He has many faces.

> This is all about appearance.

I don't think the democrats should cave because this is a terrible precedent that far outstrips "appearance". It feels like a perversion of checks and balances where, because on side doesn't get what they want, they shut down the entire government until the other side caves. I won't be a fan of future presidents shutting down the government every time they can't come to a bipartisan agreement.

Sure, but it also means that your position is that our government should be shut down and people should be unable to feed their families to prevent giving the opposition a mostly meaningless amount of money to build a useless thing that pales in comparison to how much we've blown on the F-35 (literally like 1% of the cost), a largely useless airplane.

Which is to say, one party is certainly responsible for picking this fight, but both parties are responsible for not ending it.

Is your point that one side should cave because the numbers are meaningless? If so, I don't agree - they aren't meaningless. No one should be able to hold the American people hostage in order to get what they want - it not democratic. You shouldn't be allowed to undermine democracy by using threatening Americans as hostage - fullstop. Your suggestion is to just cave whenever one side threatens a shutdown is unacceptable

They are acting like children. If your son relentlessly bullied your other baby and in order for your baby to stop crying your son said "give me $5" (a meaningless amount to most adults) - the solution wouldn't be to give him $5 and teach him that whenever he wants money he just has to threaten throw the baby down the stairs.

The Democrats have the CR on their side: Continuing Resolution. The Democrats are asking for a simple, clean CR (the proposition to keep the old budget for just 3 or 4 weeks while we debate longer)

If the clean CR fails, then its a terrible future ahead. In 2018, when Democrats were in the opposite situation (they were denying the CR), it was on the onus of the Republicans to push for the CR.

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The only reason why the CR is agreed upon in the past, is because both sides recognize the harm that a shutdown would cause. Unfortunately, one side is willing to shutdown the government and avoid the CR this time.

It is also about not teaching people that you can subvert democratic practice and get what you want.

As another commentor noted, this is a matter of precedence for the Democrats.

Trump has refused to accept continuing resolution proposals unless they include a down payment on the wall [1] - these proposals continue prior funding while the budget is discussed, alleviating the shutdown.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-latest-2-dozen-h...

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