Cutting Through The Shutdown Blather

A government shutdown puts the commentariat–the pundits and pontificators who see themselves as arbiters of political discourse–into overdrive. Unfortunately, most of them are consumed with the more superficial “win/lose” questions: who will voters blame? How will public opinion shake out? Which personalities and parties will benefit, and which will be damaged? Who will blink first, and how long will this shutdown last?

I do a lot of reading, and I’ve seen very few efforts to take a step back and look at the “big picture,” but a couple of days ago, I encountered one. The Daily Prospect pointed out the stark reality of our current situation in a headline that read “The Government Has Been Shut Down for Months.”

The negotiations and debates are operating under the premise that appropriations to federal agencies are flowing today and will stop flowing tomorrow, and that this is something political leaders want to avoid. It’s hard to uncover any evidence that this is truly the case. The Supreme Court’s latest ruling definitively allows the Trump administration to cancel whatever funding they disfavor within 45 days of the end of the appropriation, without any approval from Congress. About 12 percent of the federal workforce has been terminated.

The larger point is that the government is already shut down, and has been for several months, as the Trump administration initiated an assault on this system of government. Activities deemed “essential” by the president—stalking immigrants, lobbing missiles at Iran, etc.—have gone on, but activities purported to conflict with the president’s policies, regardless of whether they have been authorized by the lawmaking body of the United States, have been stopped, interrupted only by occasional federal courts telling the president that doing so is illegal, which the Supreme Court subsequently brushes aside.

The article proceeded to provide evidence for its contention that we haven’t had a truly operational government since Trump assumed office; whatever is being “shut down” bears no resemblance to the government created by our Constitution and faithful to the rule of law.

Our inexplicably corrupt Supreme Court recently allowed Trump to rescind $4 billion dollars in foreign aid, but as the article pointed out, the Court hasn’t addressed the $410 billion that the administration has simply withheld from programs across the country–an amount representing close to half of all  fiscal year 2025 non-defense spending authorized by Congress. Those dollars have simply vanished,  with no explanation of how money is being spent or where that withheld spending is going.

Some 12 percent of the federal workforce has previously been terminated, and the OMB director, Russ Vought, claims a shutdown will allow the Office  to fire many more, despite the fact that a shutdown provides no actual legal authority to fire federal employees. (Legal authority is, of course, beside the point to members of this lawless administration– there was no legal authority to rescind or withhold appropriated spending without congressional approval, or put workers on extended administrative leave, or issue irrational Executive Orders, either.)

No one knows better than the current federal workers that we have no functioning government to shut down.

The Federal Unionists Network (FUN) has sent a letter  to the Democratic leadership, urging them to “reject any bad deal in the name of protecting federal employees.” The letter asserted that fighting Trump’s consolidation of power is more important. “A government shutdown is never Plan A. Federal workers and the communities we serve will face severe hardship. But federal workers will willingly forego paychecks in the hopes of preserving the programs we have devoted our lives to administering,”

The letter, which agreed that the government is functionally shut down, outlined the “unprecedented harms” Americans are already experiencing from Trump’s deadly funding cuts, including to Social Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and from Trump’s attacks on independent science and data, agency closures without congressional input, and the decimation of labor.

Others have pointed out that passage of a budget–or a continuing resolution–is actually meaningless, since the administration will continue to ignore its provisions. Agreeing to a mechanism that purports to keep the government open would simply serve to normalize a dramatically abnormal situation–a situation in which a profoundly ignorant and increasingly mentally-ill President being manipulated by the White Christian Nationalists who authored Project 2025 routinely ignores Congress and his constitutional duties.

What is being shut down is the fantasy that we have a functioning government.