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Comment by ipython | Hacker News Reader

My concern is that we will end up in a state of perpetual government "shutdown". The republicans, instead of reopening the entire government, will simply choose agencies to fund in order to keep the pain felt by the American people just low enough so they don't get fired (ala office space).

Once that happens, Congress has basically iced itself out. Oversight from unfriendly government agencies? No worries, they're shut down because they're unpaid. And clearly this demonstrates the executive needs more power, since Congress is completely frozen. Finally, the Supreme Court is no longer an issue either, since that's not funded either.

Someone tell me why this couldn't happen.

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Yeah, I think the actual underpinning support that broke this time is recission. In the past, of congress passed a budget with money for the some department or line item, that money would be spent. Now the president has claimed that he doesn't have to spend money he had been directed to spend by finding bills, and (importantly) the supreme court has upheld this stance.

This means that there is no longer the ability to negotiate a budget in good faith. The Dems can fight for more health care funding (or whatever) and the compromise can happen, and then the president can just say "sike!" And not do it.

And, political leanings aside, this president has shown that he will indeed break any agreement he decides to, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to negotiate. So I'm thinking this shutdown lasts a Long time.

Yeah, that seems like a pretty major problem. It isn’t even clear really how negotiations should start, without any ability to make binding deals.

Impeachment. Negotiations should start with impeachment. The President is not faithfully executing the laws passed by Congress, and the Supplicating Council has decreed that the only remedy is impeachment. It's time to impeach and convict.

The third time will totally be different guys!

It's one of the very few remaining in-system ways for the Constitutional US Government to continue existing. So yes, I would say it's worth banging that drum again. Maybe Susan Collins has even learned a lesson of her own.

No impeachment has ever worked.

When about half of congress is more okay with the executive collecting power than with impeaching the executive, that threat is meaningless.

Well yes, the follow up to my point is that every member of Congress who is not currently supporting impeachment/conviction is complicit in this abject failure of governance.

Congress has had problems for decades (thanks to Newt and the childish boomers), which is what has been accreting so much power in the Presidency to begin with. But there is still time to pull up by Congress reasserting its authority as an institution, and that time is now.

The balance shifts after the midterms, even if the Republicans win big.

Then the president is on his way out, and Republicans start looking for and building favor with the next person.

(Which is really what all the "third term" BS is about. Trump has no intention, age-wise, of running for a third term, but talking about it keeps the lame duck calculus on ice. Hence why there aren't any details about "how", just a vague "we have a plan")

Sure, but they won’t actually do that. So, indefinite shutdown I guess?

I think the top level comment really sets a great context for discussing this. The Republican goal has been to destroy, part out, and sell off our Constitutionally-limited government. Whether the government is nominally "shut down" or not doesn't really matter to that overall plan.

So yes, this is not going to be resolved in a matter of weeks. But something has to happen in order for it to resolve one way or another, and one of those possibilities (that you should be championing if you appreciate our Constitutionally-limited government!) is for Congress to start exerting their authority independent of Dear Leader's grip on the Party.

Frankly, it's time to look into seeing how recall elections work in various states.

"Our legally elected representative directly refuses to represent us" should be plenty of grounds.

The Constitution forbids states from recalling Congressional representatives.

Which part?

Citation needed, as I can’t find evidence of this.

They aren't wrong: https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt%5Colr%5Chtm/98-R-1540.htm

Recalling congressional representatives is probably not allowed. AFAICT, however, there has never been a federal court ruling on the (likely) exclusive right of congress to expel members.

The closest I could find was Burton v. U.S., where the court declined to rule, since the law in question didn't apply to senators at the time.

> Now the president has claimed that he doesn't have to spend money he had been directed to spend by finding bills, and (importantly) the supreme court has upheld this stance.

So this means the Supreme Court has unilaterally implemented the line item veto ? So much for "balls and strikes" eh.

> and (importantly) the supreme court has upheld this stance

Caveat: on a preliminary basis in most of the decisions

Important to differentiate SCOTUS saying "there isn't a compelling reason to block this power before we decide" and "here's our decision about the legality of this power"

Rough summary of current state: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-courts-hampered-...

I'm half-curious if Roberts is playing for time to avoid a constitutional crisis, figuring it's better to cede a temporary power (and avoid the executive stuffing the bench or whatever insane shit they'd try) than to cast it in case law. Not great for the rule of law, but I can see the realpolitik (which Marbury v. Madison shows has always been a consideration for inter-branch squabbles)

The Roberts courts is in on this. They know Trump won't last forever and when he's gone, they get Vance to carry on with their Dominionist project. People need to stop thinking that the branches are playing realpolitik games... the various Republicans are either all in on Christofascism or they're fooling themselves that they're not, or they're too spineless to fight back.

Yeah, I think too many people (especially dem leadership, but also a lot of centrist Republican voters) are waiting for things to "go back to normal."

There's a kind of mental trap (Frances Fukuyama and the end of history) where you consider the modern liberal capitalist democracy an attractor state of such strength that anything like the current admin is a temporary aberration,that we can wait it out.

And just like the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, I think the populist demagogue class can retain power longer than the liberal institutions can endure. I certainly hope I'm incorrect about this.

I presume that the court knows what it is doing, which is playing a partisan game. Last administration it invented a whole new legal doctrine (major questions) to fabricate a way to block the biden agenda, this administration it is doing its best to give the trump administration a huge amount of power _without_ ceding that power indefinitely to the next administration via precedent.

If this continues for much longer, local/state governments can, should, and eventually will commandeer the taxes that currently go to the federal government. There is no point in paying federal tax if the federal government is no longer functional. States are already trying to step up with emergency declarations to enable financial support to work around SNAP being unfunded; passing state laws to redirect useless federal taxes to fund state food programs in order to prevent the alternative of immediate violent revolution as millions of people go hungry is an obvious course of action when they exhaust that capacity...

And this will work much better in most blue states than most red states, which are more dependent on federal funds. Which means the likely response is the federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs in select states.

I'm sorry, can you clarify that last part?

The federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs...?

I am saying one likely outcome is a federal government that explicitly and openly funds social programs that were formerly available to everyone only in states where it has a political majority.

They will begin because they have presently stopped, and because it places additional taxation burden on blue states if they first allow the states to try to pick up their own slack, because generally only the blue states (Texas being the major possible exception) will be able to do so.

This results in the federal government taking care of their base and their opposition subsidizing this support for their base.

Gotcha, thank you; that's much clearer!

Is the Air Force still being paid? We've seen a complete willingness to have the military turned against the people and the tech gap between us citizens and the fully equipped military is staggering. A couple drone swarms and even hungry folks will have to take permanent cover and that's just the stuff declassified. It's an interesting time where a very small number of folks can effectively hold off the entire citizenry for long enough that the "millions of people go hungry" problem solves itself. Pick which regions get food first and you wont even have to bother with things like gerrymandering anymore.

Not the Air Force but forces in direct control of the president like ICE/Secret Service are being paid in advance to ensure their continued service https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1978925656785457247

Sadly I don't think it works this way, at least IIUC -- the state can't withhold taxes from the federal government, because those taxes (from biweekly paychecks anyway) don't go through the states -- they go directly to the federal government. Some states are trying to pass laws to still make headway in this area, for reasons like you suggest, for example NY:

https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/10/state-lawmaker...

(it's a really interesting situation since I think I read somewhere that the reason federal income taxes are directly remitted to the federal government today, is specifically to disallow this kind of state retaliation)

Although, Republicans would ostensibly like to shrink the size of the government and Democrats would probably at this point prefer their money to go to an entity that will actually provide services. So I don’t really see why there isn’t a broad consensus for implementing this idea.

Because Republicans don't want to shrink the size of government as a whole, rather they want most funding to go to a massive domestic paramilitary terror squad to keep citizens in line.

>Although, Republicans would ostensibly like to shrink the size of the government

Where did you get that idea? That's never been true. You may just have been hoodwinked by their "Two Santas" strategy.

Republicans have been explicitly playing that game as promoted by Jude Wanninski[1] since the late 1970s, and it's been loudly touted as quite successful by Republicans.

The idea is to cut taxes and spend like drunken sailors when Republicans are in power, then cry poverty and austerity when Democrats are in power, loudly calling for incredibly popular Democratic programs to be slashed.

I'm not making this up. See the links below. It's not like this has been a secret for the past fifty years or anything.

[0] https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/two-santas-str...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski

Speed running to become an actual developing nation. This is what millions of migrants are trying to escape from. Ironic, for all parties involved (well, except for the ones on top of course)

> Speed running to become an actual developing nation.

That's what it looks like from the outside, but I can't understand what the gain is. Who benefits? The result of the middle class was massive advancement and an equally massive increase in standard of living for the wealthy who captured most of the gains.

What do they gain from stagnating innovation and a lack of education, services, etc.?

It makes me think of the old Olympic and sports videos. The participants basically suck because they're coming from a small pool of people wealthy enough to not need a job. Do they really want the pool of candidates competing to become doctors, etc. to be smaller which will end up lowering the overall quality for them?

Or do they think they'll simply hire the best and brightest from other countries that are investing in their citizens?

"better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" is the expression and idea you're looking for.

Alternatively "better to rule among the miserable than to serve among the great."

It's a consistent theme with most autocracies.

Short term profit extraction for the already obscenely-wealthy.

That's it, that's the only goal.

The ridiculously wealthy view the system as a strictly zero-sum game, and they want to keep everything they have, and deny the rest of the population of everything. They understand this isn't sustainable, so they're fortifying bunkers and buying up islands.

The days of Henry Ford capitalists who think their workers should be paid enough to buy their products seems to be unfashionable (even though he was a Nazi supporting racist, he had his head screwed on better than they do).

The end game of full on narcissistic capitalism is coming. Hopefully the Henry Ford types wake the fuck up and do something about their peers losing the fucking plot entirely.

> Who benefits?

People who would rather be kings of shit mountain, than rich and powerful but bound by law in a functional society.

> Who benefits?

In addition to what the other replies are saying (I think they're all at least partly right), Trump benefits. Right now.

He's getting to be the King he always believed was his right and due.

It’s a failed state and people need to get out.

That's exactly the plan. Not only this, but Republicans don't want to have congress working again. So their king will operate with zero oversight.

The first comment that factored in that Trump literally announced the closure of the government before democrats even realized what was going to happen.

There is no reason it could not happen, our country (the United States) has rapidly and radically changed in the past 10 months and 10 days. The only longer shutdown was in 2018-2019 during Trump's first term, and this shutdown is looking to blow past that milestone.

I'm happy these posts aren't getting flagged any longer, though. For the centrality of the United States in the tech industry (and vice versa), US politics are unfortunately also the most relevant story in the tech industry for any time horizon of a month or longer. Even Trump's "Long Live the King" announcement from near the start of his term was not taken seriously. It was quickly flagged here.

It sucks, but Trump is just the biggest tech story of the day every day, by virtue of being the latent factor.

There is no reason that can't happen. But consider also what it will mean if the government does re-open. I think it's much more likely than not that it reopens under Republican terms.

It sounds dramatic but it is worth describing plainly: This administration is destructive, and it has already been the end of many things as we know it.

HN admins have some of the most influential in this administration on speed dial, the flagging and non-reversal of flagging was not due to ignorance.

I think if this was the plan, the right would be insisting on something more outlandish than a clean CR.

> clean CR

So dastardly that no one seems to be able to explain how dastardly it is.

'Clean' CR after they already rammed through their whole agenda in a huge bill that threatened worse cuts if the government shutdown. Yet it seems they cut with or without a shutdown.

Republicans have proven they won't follow the same rules and aren't negotiating in good faith.

They'll do whatever they can get away with, and if bad things happen (whether they are opposed or not) then it's anyone else's fault.

Rammed through, is an interesting way to write that they had the votes and passed HR1.

When Democrats had the Admin, Senate, and House, they put the ACA provisions on sunsetting subsidies in. How dastardly are the Republicans that they forced Democrats to do that when it was done with almost zero Republican votes?

Your post is just game. “My side is good and their side is evil”… don’t you get tired of that?

“We passed clean government funding that cost 20 million people their health care coverage.”

You are falling for semantics games.

It’s the CR that Dems passed last year.

Stop. You aren’t even falling for it. They’re using shutdown as leverage to try and get something they couldn’t get when they had all three houses. You can agree or disagree that is a good idea or that it will work, but can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.

Dems voted for the BBB under threat of worse cuts coming with a shutdown. The cuts and illegal actions continued. Going along with the bullies only proved that the bullies can push further.

So… absolutely normal politics.

If the Dems don’t like the political outcome of losing so many elections, they should propose popular policies ideas and candidates to win elections.

By equating it with last year you are pretending there is no context or history for negotiation and that budget resolutions are just housekeeping, which is exactly the republican talking point and is trivially shown to be untrue.

If you point your analysis at yourself you can see how you pivot perspectives in synchrony with the abusive behaviors as it supports your political alignment.

They have a majority and campaigned on doing those things. They have a right to do it. The Democrats don't have a majority and it's bizarre/dysfunctional that they can force the entire government to shut down to try and get their agenda implemented, even though they lost the election.

No replies but you're right. All top comments are blaming Republicans, but the the Republican part has passed. If the Democrats sign the budget it passes. Depending on which "side" (I hate that term) you view this from, the other side is holding it up.

Which side is also withholding emergency funds meant for SNAP?

At the big cost of insurance premiums going up substantially

Sure, it is a negotiation, and the shutdown is because neither side will agree to certain things the other side wants to do.

The Democrats won't agree to making the awful omnibus bill cuts permanent and essentially defunding the ACA, because they want to govern and actually help all our people.

The Republicans won't agree to providing and caring for Americans through programs that are already fully approved, because they want to destroy those programs without actually having the votes to repeal them, because they want to destroy the government and harm anyone who doesn't fit their particular view of what a "real American" is.

So while your words are technically true, they serve to obscure a very real difference in why each side is refusing to end the shutdown.

I don't know about you, but I think the side that actually wants to govern the country, uphold the rule of law, and help people in need, is really not the one that we should be blaming for refusing to compromise on their principles (however late they may have come to them).

The Democrats might "want to govern" but they lost the election, so what they want shouldn't matter.

The United States is not an autocracy where one party wins and then gets to dictate everything. The Democrats are indeed still trying to govern, as in have the Constitutional US Government continue functioning. The Republicans are trying to destroy that system, to usher in whatever system Corporate America (ie Big Tech) wants instead. Think your rights were neutered by Xitter trying to cut down on disinformation? Try when that same account ban system is linked into your ability to post anywhere, or your ability to travel. And no, having supported it doesn't mean you will automatically get a pass to be treated well.

Please note the distinction between "govern" and "rule."

The Democratic Party is not seeking to rule. They are seeking to have the government do its damn job.

The Republican Party is seeking to rule, but not govern: that is, they get to be in charge, but they take no responsibility for anything that happens under their rule. (Most especially Trump and his administration; Congressional Republicans are a bit less of the former and a lot more of the latter.)

if republican party knew (had any desire) to actually govern the country would become 1-party within one election cycle.

[Citation needed]

The Republican aversion to governing is a very new thing.

Like, sure, the "government small enough to drown in a bathtub" philosophy is not particularly new, but the idea that Republicans in Congress should actively oppose any and all attempts to make government function at a basic level? That the executive should be actively dismantling his entire branch?

None of that is even old enough to vote.

If what you say were true, then it would have happened back under GWB.

"look - this fight will be over if you stop trying to defend yourself from my swinging fists"

“We lost so many series of important elections that now we have no power. So, we’ll just obstruct the party in power and our “side” will support the very actions we would cry bloody murder over”

Then let Republicans remove the filibuster. They can do it with a simple majority.

Yes they seem to be discussing it now. It's odd that this mechanism lasted so long.

The filibuster has essentially become a mechanism to ensure you have a somewhat broad consensus among the states, instead of being able to ram things through with a 51% majority.

Just keeping the lights on shouldn’t require a 60% consensus (it should be the default). This is represented by the reconciliation process, which is some budget related voting process that only requires a majority in the senate. But the reconciliation process was used up to pass the “one big beautiful bill.”

You keep saying filibuster, but it is the “vote for cloture” (similar to a quiet filibuster) which is the thing that has blocked most legislation.

I am curious why Republicans have not changed the parliamentary rules for cloture. The party seems to be pushing states to gerrymander to benefit their Congressional power as early as the next Congressional election. My best guess at the moment is there are a few Republican members who fear what the party leadership does with no opposition party constraints.

Republicans don't want to remove the filibuster because they want to keep it as a tool when they're in the minority and use it to blame Dems for not doing things while in the majority.

Fundamentally, Republicans just want tax breaks and judicial appointments, and the filibuster already doesn't block those. So it hasn't really been a problem for them. Since Dems in theory want the government to work, they can keep things working well enough to let the Dems deal with their time bombs like expiring ACA subsidies and middle class tax breaks.

That's not the way governance works. Did you feel that way when the Democrats held all three branches and still the Republicans did everything in their power to break government? Trump won the presidency by a slim margin... the Senate Republicans represent fewer people than the Democrats do. The government is designed to work together, unless one party decides to stop playing by any rules apparently.

What did they do in their power to break the government? They voted to reauthorize spending during Biden's presidency many times, did they not?

This comment makes you look willfully ignorant of the statements and actions of Republicans in power.

Start with DOGE and Russel Vought’s actions. Then look at Congressional Republican’s recision bill, their lack of Article 1 oversight of what Trump’s Executive is doing, their consistent support of the Executive against any attempt by the Judicial to enforce the law.

What does this mean? If youre implying "clean CR" is perfectly fine can you just say that? If you don't think it's perfectly fine what ARE you trying to say?

It's double speak to call it a "clean CR" when there was just a huge bill changing a ton of tax code, budget, and increasing ICE's budget by 10x.[1] Passing the CR would have approved those spending changes as if they were in an appropriations bill.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Big_Beautiful_Bill_Act

with a clean CR we can open the government temporarily and pass a budget, right? the whole CR thing is terrible, we need single subject bills

the government doesn't need to be opened for a budget to pass though, "clean CR" is not a prerequisite for anything

They aren't negotiating. They went home. Their job is to come up with a budget but once this didn't go through they just... went home.

BTW the not passed continuing resolution only goes through November 21st.

You still take Republicans in Congress at their word?

Look at the actions of Russell Vought, not the words of Ted Cruz.

There is only limited legal ability to fund departments outside of an appropriations law. Republicans could pass one if they eliminated the filibuster, but that's a nuclear option they haven't leaned on yet.

The executive branch is applying various tricks to keep some absolutely critical departments going but they can't just fund anything they like. At least, not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval. But we'll see how much of a difference that makes.

> not according to the Constitution, which is very explicit that you can't spend money without Congressional approval.

Trump has already shown his willingness to flout that. If he does it again, who's going to stop him? Congress?

I suspect this shutdown will last a while, but I don’t think Republicans will have enough votes to open anything without Democrat buy-in. R needs 20% of the Ds to vote for R bills to get anything budget-changing passed (except the 1 Reconciliation per year that only requires a simple majority). Short of Dems feeling some insane pressure (eg. Military threats or somehow defunding of core government tasks like police, education, medical, Social Security), I don’t see that happening right now.

My point is that they won’t feel the need to ever “officially” re open the government.

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but: Republicans have enough votes to get moving on whatever they choose (including stopgap measures) regardless of what a minority of democrats may think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option

> The nuclear option can be invoked by a senator raising a point of order that contravenes a standing rule. The presiding officer would then overrule the point of order based on Senate rules and precedents; this ruling would then be appealed and overturned by a simple majority vote (or a tie vote), establishing a new precedent. The nuclear option is made possible by the principle in Senate procedure that appeals from rulings of the chair on points of order relating to nondebatable questions are themselves nondebatable. The nuclear option is most often discussed in connection with the filibuster. Since cloture is a nondebatable question, an appeal in relation to cloture is decided without debate. This obviates the usual requirement for a two-thirds majority to invoke cloture on a resolution amending the Standing Rules.

It looks like they are already talking about it again in the news.

The Republicans don't want to get rid of the filibuster because they're scared of setting the precedent, they're scared because if they continue to pass bills with zero Democrat votes then they have to own full responsibility for what happens. Recession/depression is quickly approaching...

I don't think they're scared at all.

Instead, I think that crash-and-burn, and then blame the other guy, was the plan all along.

Deflecting all blame towards the other guy has been the standard practice for at least multiple decades now. It's not something that is kept in the pocket and used for special occasions; that play has instead been a constant in US national politics for a rather long time now.

The only new part with this administration is actively throwing monkey wrenches into the works and then acting all surprised when things break, or just failing to admit that they've broken a thing. (But they're not stupid; they knew that doing this would break stuff.)

I don’t buy that reasoning. They clearly don’t care about their blame claims matching reality, so they will continue to lie about causes. The same with norms — they don’t stop breaking the norms of the US government and politics during Trump’s terms.

That said, there does seem to be something which has thus far kept them from changing the cloture/filibuster rules to pass bills with a simple majority. I’m curious if the “Freedom Caucus” is fearful of Republican leadership so they are still holding the Sword of Damocles over the role of the Speaker of the House.

They are now also only 20 days away from completely owning the shutdown. The CR bill they are voting on, that the House passed, was only for thru November 21st. The House will need to show up to do business to vote and pass a new funding bill, lest they be the ones preventing a funding bill getting passed. They're also scared of having to convene because they are scared they will have to vote on releasing the Epstein files.

>Someone tell me why this couldn't happen.

Beware the ides of march.

During a constitutional crisis that doesn't seem to have an immediate resolution political violence should be expected from the inside as an attempt to reach a resolution. The last line of defense is that military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution and soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command.

nobody can gain loyalty anywhere near trump nor does anyone have close to the unhinged charisma

but the government is shut down there should be no expectation that there will be any agreement to half fund it and absent that there's not really any foreseeable mechanism for the treasury to start operating on a large scale entirely outside of the law

so i guess the other last line of defense is the bond market and foreign exchange markets which wouldn't respond well to dictatorial control of the treasury and the fed

It’s hard to foresee how close to accurate your forecast is.

But we are in a de facto junta if the military refuses to take orders from a president, at least for the duration of the presidency. It’s pretty hard to run a free and fair election under those conditions (we dealt with that in The South in the early Reconstruction years).

The First Reconstruction was a very different civ-mil scenario. The military protected freedmen from the various insurgent and paramilitary groups that sought to deprive freedmen of rights.

To be more clear than my vague references, 60 to 70 senators cornered Caesar and stabbed him to death to protect the republic. They killed him but didn't succeed in protecting the republic.

An extended shutdown, an actually refusing-to-function House of Representatives, and a president with not even the slightest respect for the Constitution... the comparisons to first century BCE Rome exaggerated or metaphorical.

Trump got someone to donate $130 million as an obvious symbol to try to buy military loyalty by paying salaries (nevermind it's about enough to cover a single nice lunch)

> military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution

Even if so, the tricky part of course is the SCOTUS that declares anything that Trump wants "constitutional".

> The last line of defense is that military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution and soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command.

Trump has done a number of monumentally stupid things over the past 10 months, but publicly threatening his generals takes the cake.

Donald. Sweetie. Pumpkin. What were you thinking? These men are career military men who are not impressed or intimidated by you or your bone spurs.

> soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command

Actually, soldiers mostly follow the money. In Rome the the Praetorian Guard realized their power and started installing leaders. In developing nations with military coups, the soldiers back whoever will pay them. Yes, ideologically soldiers will follow a chain of command and conservative-anything; but practically speaking, they will follow whoever lets them rape and pillage and retire to a villa.

Because at some point the Executive Branch has no more budget left to spend because Congress can't approve a budget?

(we need to talk about your TPS reports)

Maybe if the shutdown goes to the midterm, we’ll send representatives who’ll lower federal taxes to a pittance. Then Trump can try his experiment of running the government on tariffs instead (good luck) and we all get to hope our states can fill the gap.

I think ATCs will have resigned en masse long before then.

It won't happen that way because in a couple of years they will give Trump unlimited power the same way they did Hitler in the 1930s. From democracy to dictatorship in less than a decade.

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