The Clown Show Revival

Starring shutdown extremists who don't care… and don’t carry Reagan’s legacy

 

Not the party of Reagan anymore

The Clown Show is back in Washington for a return engagement starring roughly 20 extremists who now stand in the way of the federal budget and are pushing the government toward a shutdown. This small group is tying the process in knots, blocking even temporary measures to keep the government functioning.  It’s as if they don’t remember that this is the fifth time this has been tried since the 1990s and everytime it has been done, their side has suffered the consequences.       

The characters change – in 1995 the ringmaster was Newt Gingrich – but the plot, and for that matter the main subplot, remains the same. First a band of self-described “revolutionaries” gets elected from districts that are so dominated by the GOP that a Republican zombie would beat any Democrat. Once seated in the House, they find each other and scheme to prevent the Congress from funding the government and thereby shut down all but the most essential services. Layoffs and staff shortages would choke activity everywhere else; the National Institutes of Health, the food stamp program, air traffic control, wildfire fighting, the Internal Revenue Service, etc. etc.

The shutdown stars always say they want to slash spending and, as a side benefit, cripple the government for the long-term. In fact, they hope to thrill constituents who hate the federal bureaucracy, especially the tax collectors, and revel in the chaos in Washington. They can do this because their party’s majority is so small that Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs pretty much every GOP vote to pass his plan to avert the shutdown.    

People who have never been inside a shutdown battle look at the Republican experience and conclude that it’s political suicide. From Gingrich onward, the GOP has been blamed for the inconveniences and the $1 billion average hit taken by the economy because businesses that deal with the government can’t do business and the cash from most federal paychecks is withdrawn from circulation. Voter resentment then leads to lost Republican House seats. It has happened every time.

One could ask: If shutdowns are so costly to their party, why do they do it? The answer is that they really don’t care about their party or the country, beyond their fiefdoms. Much of this concern for power is quite personal, since most would have trouble earning the salary and benefits they get as members of Congress. (And don’t get me started on their lust for fame.)  With these factors in mind, they play to their hyper-partisan supporters who believe that a legislature designed so that compromise makes governing possible is corrupt because it doesn’t favor their partisan cause.   

One of the current shutdown drama stars, Republican Representative Bob Good of Virginia, recently explained that his party has corruptly joined the Democrats to create a “uniparty” that continues routine spending term-after-term. “Most of what Congress does is not good for the American people,” says Good. “Most of what we do as a Congress is totally unjustified.”

Good, it must be noted, has sponsored eleven bills in the current Congress. His costar Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has sponsored 38 pieces of legislation. Check the other agents of chaos and  you’ll see that most of them have also proposed that the House do one thing or another. So much for the claim that they believe the government can’t get anything right.

More proof that Good is bad at assessing the government is evident everywhere you look. You may find mistakes, waste, and hints of corruption in the construction of our roads and highways, in the government’s programs to safeguard our food and environment, in Social Security, Medicare and in its scientific and medical research. No serious person would look across our landscape and conclude that the government never does anything right. That recent flight you took?  Thank the air traffic control system.  Covid vaccines. Patents. Reliable utilities. All were created at least in part with federal dollars. All exist thanks to the art of compromise.

With their constituents more interested in antigovernment rhetoric and their grandstanding applauded by donors and voters alike, Good, Gaetz and the others gleefully seize centerstage in the latest revival of the Clown Show. They do it, not for some noble cause, but because they want to be stars, even if it’s in an awful show where only a sliver of the audience will applaud.