Peter1469
01-25-2019, 07:47 AM
Waiting for a Shutdown to End in Disaster (https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/01/waiting-shutdown-end-disaster/154291/)
I am not posting this article because of its theme: that it will take a disaster before the congress and president get serious about ending the shutdown, but rather to illustrate the insider views on the likelihood of a compromise anytime soon.
As the longest government shutdown in American history lurches toward its fifth week, a grim but growing consensus has begun to emerge on Capitol Hill: There may be no way out of this mess until something disastrous happens.This is, of course, not a sentiment lawmakers are eager to share on the record. But in interviews this week with congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle (whom I granted anonymity in exchange for candor), I heard the same morbid idea expressed again and again.
The basic theory—explained to me between weary sighs and defeated shrugs—goes like this: Washington is at an impasse that looks increasingly unbreakable. President Donald Trump is dug in; so is Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Democrats have public opinion on their side, but the president is focused on his conservative base. For a deal to shake loose in this environment, it may require a failure of government so dramatic, so shocking, as to galvanize public outrage and force the two parties back to the negotiating table.
In these interviews, I heard an array of macabre hypotheticals—from airplane crashes to food-safety scares, TSA strikes to terrorist incidents. But the one theme that ran through every conversation was a sense that the current political dynamics won’t change until voters get a lot angrier.
“This is all pageantry,” a Democratic House aide said of the posturing by Trump and Congress. “It’s going to take a big national event to move things. I mean, we’re at a standstill.”
One senior Republican Senate staffer told me he could envision the shutdown lasting until March, when federal funding dries up for food stamps—a crisis that would be hard for Washington to ignore. “Not only are there going to be a lot of hungry families,” he said, “but there are going to be a lot of Walmarts and Safeways and Krogers that are missing revenue.”
Others warned of potential flash points in America’s airports, where TSA agents and air-traffic controllers have already been working without pay for weeks. According to the Washington Post reporter Robert Costa (https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1085302803482980353), some Republican lawmakers close to the White House have privately concluded that the shutdown won’t end until TSA employees stay home and Americans “get furious about their flights.”
On a similar—if darker—note, I spoke to one congressional staffer who wondered aloud whether it might take a stressed-out air-traffic controller causing a plane crash to bring an end to the shutdown. And several aides worried that some kind of terrorist incident would end up serving as the catalyst to get the government up and running again.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who spent more than a decade working in Congress, told me he could imagine the shutdown ending if the reported lapse in inspections (https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/15/health/shutdown-fda-food-inspections-risk/index.html) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prompted a widespread food-safety scare. “We saw what happened with romaine lettuce a few weeks ago,” he said. “You give that same kind of scare to a ranch in California, and all of a sudden not only do everyone’s beef prices go up, but there’s a mass panic.”
I am not posting this article because of its theme: that it will take a disaster before the congress and president get serious about ending the shutdown, but rather to illustrate the insider views on the likelihood of a compromise anytime soon.
As the longest government shutdown in American history lurches toward its fifth week, a grim but growing consensus has begun to emerge on Capitol Hill: There may be no way out of this mess until something disastrous happens.This is, of course, not a sentiment lawmakers are eager to share on the record. But in interviews this week with congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle (whom I granted anonymity in exchange for candor), I heard the same morbid idea expressed again and again.
The basic theory—explained to me between weary sighs and defeated shrugs—goes like this: Washington is at an impasse that looks increasingly unbreakable. President Donald Trump is dug in; so is Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Democrats have public opinion on their side, but the president is focused on his conservative base. For a deal to shake loose in this environment, it may require a failure of government so dramatic, so shocking, as to galvanize public outrage and force the two parties back to the negotiating table.
In these interviews, I heard an array of macabre hypotheticals—from airplane crashes to food-safety scares, TSA strikes to terrorist incidents. But the one theme that ran through every conversation was a sense that the current political dynamics won’t change until voters get a lot angrier.
“This is all pageantry,” a Democratic House aide said of the posturing by Trump and Congress. “It’s going to take a big national event to move things. I mean, we’re at a standstill.”
One senior Republican Senate staffer told me he could envision the shutdown lasting until March, when federal funding dries up for food stamps—a crisis that would be hard for Washington to ignore. “Not only are there going to be a lot of hungry families,” he said, “but there are going to be a lot of Walmarts and Safeways and Krogers that are missing revenue.”
Others warned of potential flash points in America’s airports, where TSA agents and air-traffic controllers have already been working without pay for weeks. According to the Washington Post reporter Robert Costa (https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1085302803482980353), some Republican lawmakers close to the White House have privately concluded that the shutdown won’t end until TSA employees stay home and Americans “get furious about their flights.”
On a similar—if darker—note, I spoke to one congressional staffer who wondered aloud whether it might take a stressed-out air-traffic controller causing a plane crash to bring an end to the shutdown. And several aides worried that some kind of terrorist incident would end up serving as the catalyst to get the government up and running again.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who spent more than a decade working in Congress, told me he could imagine the shutdown ending if the reported lapse in inspections (https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/15/health/shutdown-fda-food-inspections-risk/index.html) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prompted a widespread food-safety scare. “We saw what happened with romaine lettuce a few weeks ago,” he said. “You give that same kind of scare to a ranch in California, and all of a sudden not only do everyone’s beef prices go up, but there’s a mass panic.”