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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

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.

Edit: Thanks for the enlightenment!

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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.

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.

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.

> that would remove the shutdown process as a political cudgel

Which, IMHO, should absolutely be done.

Our current government is holding a gun to its own head in an attempt to negotiate. It's children vs adults and the children have all the power. What "should" be done is unlikely to happen. :(

I came to ask the same question as the parent.

This is an answer, but what are the politics of it?

Eg you could make an argument that government only maintains things (ie property and life) for the public good, therefore all state employees are required lest they endanger life and property.

You could certainly make the case that air traffic controllers are essential to life. Try landing planes at a busy airport without them.

Air traffic controllers are essential to life, which is why they are asked to go to work currently. Not getting paid is a different question entirely.

Oh ok, I understood your link to mean payment was allowed where essential.

Aren't some people getting paid? aren't they deemed essential?!?

Am I looking for sense where there isn't any?!

There are multiple layers in this shutdown:

1. This is a "partial government shutdown", so only some agencies (homeland security, state, SEC, etc) are affected. Some agencies like the Department of Defense are not affected and funded at previous levels.

And

2. There are different levels of "federal workers":

- "Essential" employees: government workers whose job are deemed to endanger "life" or "property", so they are working without pay and told to report to work. These people will (very likely receive back pay once the shutdown ends)

- "Nonessential" government employees: people who are not currently working and not receiving paychecks. These people will also most likely receive backpay once the shutdown ends.

- Federal contractors: janitors, drivers, caterers, temporary staff, part time staff, paid interns, etc are not currently working and will most likely not receive backpay once the shutdown ends.

Note that with very few exceptions (like congressmen/congresswomen/senators, etc) most people in the federal government who are affected by the shutdown are not getting paid currently at all, even if they are told to show up to work.

Just to clarify on your second point, specifically re: essential employees.

Essential employees will 100% receive pay (no "very likely"). By law, they must be paid when the government reopens. No essential employee has ever worked and not (eventually) been paid for it.

Nonessential employees will receive pay almost certainly. While legally, since they're not working, they could not be paid, paying them takes an act of Congress. In every shutdown, all nonessential personnel have been paid for the time they would have worked once they return. It would be unprecedented for them not to get paid, and there would be huge backlash if they weren't paid. I'm sure most of them are expecting it and not making other arrangements.

Contractors working directly for the government aren't working and won't get paid as you said, however if they're working through a firm, they are most likely working at their employer's office on another project and being paid normally, assuming there's work.

To add to the other comment, for example the Patent Office is self-funded and they're currently working and getting paid.

But, absurdly, they might have to stop soon because even though they're self-funded Congress must allocate their funding.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/426904-patent-of...

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.

Well don't look too hard at the UK right now. :) We have a government and PM that is effectively stuck there (thanks to the coalition's broken Fixed Term Parliaments Act) but unable to bring legislation through. They even lost a vote on the last finance bill, and the huge Brexit defeat. Either would normally have brought the government down.

Belgium famously managed with no government for well over a year, without apparently making big decisions like finance or defence changes.

"Antideficiency Act", apparently.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act

In Canada it triggers a new election

I had to refresh my memory on how this works up here, but generally our parliamentary system is designed to refresh itself when it becomes dysfunctional:

https://globalnews.ca/news/3568037/vote-of-no-confidence-can...

I don't know how it might work in the American system with the "balance of powers" or if it might be abused but generally our unstable minority governments resolve to a more stable majority after a few election calls.

> unstable minority governments resolve to a more stable majority after a few election calls.

And before that time you get parties that have to work together to keep things moving, forcing compromise, and giving the less represented groups more power for a time.

Can we get this please? I can think of a really great way to stop this shutdown by removal of one person in particular.

Honestly the last thing I want when we reach a budget impasse is for a full roster of rookie congressmen managing it. Thats ripe for abuse and you'd be getting rid of a lot of well seasoned people who know how to work around red tape to get things done and make deals.

For a well meant opposing viewpoint, flushing longer term congresspeople could mean the breaking of many lobbyist ties, shadow coalitions, and other impediments to reasonable progress. I've proposed before that campaign contribution amounts be publicized, and let people vote out the ones who have been too heavily 'bought'.

The allure of limits is not without dangers, to see how this has played out in a different arena examine California's State Assembly and how term limits affect(ed) things. For one thing Lobbyists don't have any limits.

I would be more in favor of removing any campaign contributions and publicly funding elections of candidates who get X signatures. For instance a Congressman might get 200k to campaign while a president might get many millions.

Would cost us a few billion a year but would probably save us at least that in pork barrel spending.

> flushing longer term congresspeople could mean the breaking of many lobbyist ties, shadow coalitions, and other impediments to reasonable progress.

You think lobbyists and interests groups having all the people experienced with legislation while members of Congress are all neophytes that get booted out after a handful of years (and then with job experience most relevant to legislating, which they can't do any more, and lobbying...so what is it they are going to be setting tthemselves up to do afterwards?) is going to make things better?

> I've proposed before that campaign contribution amounts be publicized

They are aren't they? opensecrets.org

I'm Canadian. It means something really different to "trigger an election." It's the expected behaviour because we don't have formally scheduled elections. There are a few different things that can trigger an election here, including a "no confidence" vote in the parliament.

I was thinking more the executive branch...

Specifically in Westminster systems (like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK) the budget is a supply bill, a bill where the government asks for money.

Supply bills are automatically confidence motions, which means that if they fail to be passed then the government (i.e, the Prime Minister and their Cabinet) is said to have lost the confidence of the House.

If this happens, the Prime Minister loses the right to govern and a new government must be formed. Usually this means an election, but in rare cases the opposition parties can form a coalition that has the confidence of the House. This process is mediated by the Governor General or (in the UK) the Queen.

But in all cases, until a new government is formed and they manage to pass a budget, the old budget remains in effect. There's no scenario in a parliamentary democracy where failing to pass a budget will cause the bureaucracy to shut down.

In the US, I could see that being weaponized. One side doesn't like the results of the last election, so they force an impasse to get a new one. (In particular, I could see the Democrats trying this after the election of 2016. Perhaps the Republicans after 2018, though I think their motivation would be less strong.)

And in the US, I could see that tactic succeeding, unless the voters were willing to punish gaming the system that way. I see no evidence that US voters are responsible enough to do so, however.

Perhaps, if the people would allow it.

Theoretically you could end up in a loop where the people vote in Party A in a minority government, then Parties B+C oppose a budget bill, an election is held, Party A is re-elected into a minority government, and Parties B+C oppose a budget bill, and so on.

But it's important to recognize that blocking a budget is a risky manoeuvre. In all likelihood the above cycle would never happen more than once or twice because people find elections irritating. If people think you called an election frivolously then voters will punish you at the polls; in the above example people would eventually get pissed off at B and C and break the cycle by giving A a majority so that they can pass their budget without opposition support.

The important thing is that in the Westminster system (e.g. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) if Parliament loses the ability to pass important bills then it results in an election. It keeps the opposition parties honest insofar that they have to be confident that they would actually gain in the polls in order for them to force an election by blocking the government. They can't just block things without repercussions.

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.

The problem may be deficit spending. Part of the budget is paid for with debt. I don't think you can auto-approve a raise in the debt ceiling.

relevant explainer video:

https://youtu.be/KIbkoop4AYE

(CGP Grey's "The Debt Limit Explained")

The debt limits is a similar, but distinct, mechanism.

> 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.

Yeah. You've got short-sighted "warriors" on both sides, trying to score cheap political points while the country burns (mostly figuratively, so far).

Can states do recall elections? Because maybe that's the answer. If all 50 states held recall elections for all Senators and Representatives, that might concentrate minds in DC a bit...

It doesn't matter how bad the individual politicians are.

There's one side that is clearly in the right. There is only ONE side which is pushing for a clean continuing resolution, to end the shutdown.

The other side is asking for concessions before they end the shutdown.

Obviously politicians are opportunistic scumbags. That's why we elect them to represent our districts, so that they return more money to our district. That's the design of the system. You have to look beyond that and focus on which side is actually pushing the correct morals (which changes from debate to debate).

It is clear which side is pushing to end the shutdown with no gains to either side, and it is clear which side is asking for a $5.7 Billion Wall before the shutdown ends.

----------

Politicians will be scumbags for now, and probably for the future. Its our job as citizens to form opinions about their behavior.

> Can states do recall elections? Because maybe that's the answer. If all 50 states held recall elections for all Senators and Representatives, that might concentrate minds in DC a bit...

We literally just had an election like 4 months ago. The new Congress literally just entered DC this month. Every House Member was up for re-election.

This is what the country voted for. Face the facts, this is Democracy at work.

I'm not looking for replacing any of the current Congress (yet...)

I'm looking to send a message. "Stop acting like two-year-olds. Stop playing stupid political games and get something done. If you won't, you risk being removed before your two-year term is up." And if that's not enough for them to stop acting like idiots, well, then let's actually hold those recall elections.

But it will only work if most or all of the states do it.

Dude, over 90% of incumbents were reelected. This is what the people want.

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php

That's a 91% reelection rate for the 2018 election. People like their Representatives and Senators. I dunno what kind of fantasy world you're living in. But house members and senate members have overwhelming support in the districts they represent.

We all hate EVERYONE ELSE's senator or representative. But that opinion holds no bearing. We only can elect our local representative.

--------

As I said earlier: this is democracy in action. This is the reality of our system of government.

The Democrats were elected to stop the wall. The Republicans were elected to build the wall. The people have spoken, and we've entered a contradiction / deadlock situation. This is what people wanted and what people voted for.

It annoys me to no end with people saying "Vote them all out". You have to recognize that people actually like their local Representatives. What people don't like is the Representatives from other parts of the country (ie: The part where you have to make concessions and work with someone different from you)

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.

The federal government must run a deficit. Balancing the budget would be a disaster for the economy. Watch this short video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxJW7hl8oqM

Just to be clear, I agree with you. I was just trying to present their argument in as unbiased a manner as I could

> I think the problem is with the debt ceiling.

While the debt ceiling issue is also frequently in the news, that is not what's going on here. In this case, the government has the money, they're just not allowed to spend anything.

In the US, unlike many other democracies, budgets expire. So in order for the government to continue functioning normally, the legislative branch has to pass a new budget bill before the previous one expires, which did not happen in this case.

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.

I would hope that the richest country in the world could endeavor to be better run than Somalia.

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.

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