US Congress releases $1.1T spending package to avert shutdown | Hacker News Reader

US Congress releases $1.1T spending package to avert shutdown

msn.com

6 pointspg_123420 comments

I used to look at these last minute shutdown saves fairly cynically. It seems very much just a bunch of political theatrics and ways to skirt stuff in under pressure. I'm sure that's very much part of it, but there's a lot more impact then I realized and I now am happy to see these events averted.

Three years ago I moved to Annapolis (near DC) and almost every third family I met had someone working in a Fed job of some sort. They follow these sorts of things with a lot more rigor because if a shutdown happens, they are temporarily out of work and a paycheck. Most of the folks I know are a little older and this isn't too big a deal, but they explain how hard it is for younger coworkers who haven't yet factored shutdowns into "part of the job" and often need bridge loans to make it through the downtime.

I don't know why I never really thought of it with that perspective before.

My niece was in this situation. Surprised me to learn from her, that she got all the pay when it was over. No lost income. Just delayed. Puts a different aspect on it. For instance, a three-week shutdown means we pay government employees three weeks pay for doing nothing.

Not a good situation, and should be avoided at all costs. But sheesh.

Well YMMV but as a contractor it hadn't mattered since they're paid from stashed money.

A government shutdown mostly means the government can't borrow any more money but if they've already borrowed it and it's not spent they can still spend it. i.e if the government stashed money somehow (not rare) they can continue to use that stashed money to pay you.

So Social Security has stashed money and it'll pay out recipients. However they will prioritize payouts over verifying benefits. Which IIRC means you can continue to get money but if you wanted to apply for social security you need to wait 3 weeks for the government to un-shutdown.

TSA apparently does not stash money so will require work-for-delayed-pay.

National parks do not do work-without-pay so hopefully you don't have a vacation involving them.

Unsurprisingly, flood insurance doesn't have a stash of money so they'll immediately halt any payouts.

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/27/government-shutdown-effects...

My guess is that there are DC local banks that offer loans specially tailored made for shutdowns? (Where perhaps you can even submit the interest to your employer as a business expense?)

Oh, it is a bunch of stupid political theatrics, but it also has real impacts on real people. Much of modern politics is like that, especially in the US. Lots of people have figured out that the theatrics sell, and like a circus performer they are driven to more and more dangerous stunts in order to get the attention.

(Note that in many political systems it's simply not possible for this kind of failure to pass a budget to happen without automatically triggering an election. The US is also unique in how normal it is for its politicians to oppose its continuing existence as a functioning federation, far more so than even the EU)

One of the shutdowns came with reporting that a number of Federal science research projects were irrevocably destroyed, because they were the sort of thing that required continuous attention by staff who were locked out of their jobs. It's a very destructive form of theatre.

It really is amazing how well Republicans took the lesson of George HW Bush's presidency to heart: No new taxes, ever, even if the country absolutely needs it.

It's been 31 years since he lost to Clinton and we still haven't had a real progressive tax policy change despite mounting debt.

TFA doesn't say: does it contain the "poison pill" about raising the social security age? If so, I don't see the Senate passing it.

Raising the retirement age may even be a good idea, but it deserves to be discussed, not crammed into a must-pass bill.

I wish we had more responsible grownups in the government.

Blame the voters... They keep selecting people from same two groups... That is definition of insanity, repeating same thing and expecting different outcome.

It's a collective action problem. As an individual voter—or a group of voters, or even an extremely large group of voters—supporting a third party candidate means throwing away your political power, because your group simply will not be large enough to win a plurality.

If we want a third party, we need to switch away from first-past-the-post voting systems. Having more than two political parties does not make mathematical sense in the current system.

One thing I've always wondered: the UK has FPTP, but there are about a dozen political parties with sitting MPs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MPs_elected_in_the_201...

Why? Because local politics is not the same as national politics. Local parties exist. The Lib Dems are effectively a "local everywhere" party who have lots of councillors but few MPs. But the US, despite the much stronger Federal/State distinction and longer lists of elected posts, seems not to have local politics? Why are there no distinctive state level parties, in either large or small states?

(The UK list has an anomalously high number of "independents", but those are just people who have been expelled from their party for gross misconduct and will be binned at the next election)

I mean you don't have to support a third party candidate in the actual election.

What would be a third party candidate are now running under the two major parties. There's a reason people say things like "Social Democrat" or "Tea Party Republican" and those candidates are effectively third-party candidates; they run under the parties banner but don't share all of the same viewpoints.

The real issue is that a minority of people vote in this country so "fringe" groups can easily win a primary by just showing up [1].

A secondary issue is the first-past-the-post system.

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnou...

Great, now please halt the congress psychotic episode for another moment and continue supplying Ukraine, to destroy more of the Russian armed forces at the cost of single digit percentage of the defence budget. There will not be another such a ridiculously good deal in the future.

> There will not be another such a ridiculously good deal in the future.

What's the good deal here? More Ukrainians and Russians dead? A peace deal needs to be floated ASAP because the Russian economy is actually not in shambles despite sanctions so the war outcome (absent a peace deal) will be won by Russia unless NATO wants to fully engage.

As someone is not a fan of Russian expansion, I still see Ukraine funding as a proxy for feeding US defense contractors.

US needs to spend a certain amount of money to deter opponents. One of the major opponents is Russia. By spending a small fraction of the deterrence money for example on cheap 155mm shells instead of on for example high tech F-22s in Alaska the US can blunt the Russian threat much much cheaper.

If Russia wants its soldiers to stop dying then it can withdraw - all it takes is one phone call from Putin to Shoigu or his generals.

> What's the good deal here?

The good deal is a halt to the escalating, expanding Russian aggression that started with the 2008 invasion of Georgia.

> A peace deal needs to be floated ASAP because the Russian economy is actually not in shambles despite sanctions so the war outcome (absent a peace deal) will be won by Russia unless NATO wants to fully engage.

Any peace deal that doesn't involve a complete Russian withdrawal is a win for Russia and encourages further aggression, the most likely first steps of which will be expansions of the current Russian intrusions in Georgia and/or Moldova, but seveeral of NATOs eastern flank members are also likely near-term targets.

> As someone is not a fan of Russian expansion, I still see Ukraine funding as a proxy for feeding US defense contractors.

Being “not a fan of Russian expansion” while seeking to reward its aggression is like being “not a fan of Nazi expansion” but wanting to hand them the Sudetenland.

Except, in this case, its not even the first step in appeasement without a clear pattern: the first step waa caving to Russia demands in 2008 that NATO not offer Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia as, in Russia’s claim, that would be regionally destabilizing and promote conflict. The consequence of that was the immediate invasion of Georgia in 2008 followed by the invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

The Russians have not expressed interest in returning to their internationally agreed borders, so "peace deal" can only mean "Ukranian surrender". Especially as they keep asking for terms which would make the next invasion easier.

> The Congressional Budget Office warned that U.S. deficits and debt will grow considerably over the next 30 years, forecasting that the nation's $34.5 trillion national debt, which currently represents about 99% of GDP, could grow and rise to 166% of GDP by 2054.

I don't see how the math turns out here: it's growing much faster than that. The public debt is growing by $1 trillion in 100 days at the moment. That's 3.5% a year and it's compounding (due to the cost of servicing the debt).

The snowball effect already started and the debt is already out of control.

I suggest we blame Bitcoin /s

> The snowball effect already started and the debt is already out of control.

I think we should report the debt and the interest on the debt in multiples of federal income tax revenue.

Division by GDP is not always informative. Debt is a stock variable and GDP (ie income) is a flow variable. A good analogy is household finance. Most people with mortgage will have a debt to gdp (ie annual income) ratio that would be 3 or 4x. But it is meaningless. What is relevant here is interest payable to income ratio.

For example, a slightly dated estimate of the “net worth” of the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Un...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com