Will the Government shut down on the 27th of March?

[jimmy olsen]

Think the GOP will go through with it? It didn't work out to well for them when they tried it against Clinton, not sure why it would be different this time around.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/02/the_coming_government_shutdown_the_march_1_sequestration_deadline_is_fake.html

Forget Sequestration
The real deadline for government shutdown is March 27.

By Matthew Yglesias|Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, at 3:36 PM

Sequestration—it's the talk of Washington. Republicans have press releases about it. Democrats have press releases about it. Media outlets are doing polls about who's to blame, and cranking out Explainer pieces to keep you informed.

But the truth is that this is by far the most boring budget crisis of the Obama years, and to call the political posturing around it kabuki is an insult to a historic Japanese theatrical tradition. Unlike the last couple of debt ceiling fights, the fiscal cliff, the 2010 lame duck, or even the underrated 2012 payroll tax holiday extension, there's no drama here because the parties aren't actually negotiating. They're not even pretending to negotiate. They're just talking.

That's because the sequester doesn't really matter.

When the sequester hits on March 1, nothing much happens. The cuts take effect, but agencies have been expecting them for months and are prepared to slow down their pace of outlays. The legislation creating the sequester back in 2011 deliberately minimized the amount of discretion that agency managers have over how to allocate cuts. But even an across-the-board cut applied to every program doesn't imply an exact equal reduction in the amount of spending each and every day or even week. For a few weeks, any halfway competent agency is going to be able to keep things running more or less as they have been recently. Big shortfalls in services would only show up later down the road.

And the reason it doesn't matter that much is that a much bigger deadline looms. On March 27 the Continuing Resolution that funds the overall discretionary operations of the federal government runs out.

When that happens, it's lights out—quite literally. There are some exceptions for emergency personnel and entitlement programs (think Medicare) keep functioning, but when the CR expires, the government shuts down. All "non-essential" federal employees are put on furlough, and programs simply stop functioning. The National Parks will close down, and the Centers for Disease Control won't track infections. Visa and passport applications won't be processed. Nor will new applications for disability benefits. Regulatory agencies will take a break.

A government shutdown's something we haven't seen since Jan. 6, 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich patched up their budget disagreements. It looked very close to happening back in 2011 when flush-with-victory House Republicans initially seemed intent on pressing demands on the Obama administration that the president would never accept.

Ultimately, John Boehner and his troops agreed to settle for less than they'd set out to obtain. That meant a $39 billion, one-year cut in discretionary spending, but no "policy riders" on abortion, no defunding of NPR, etc. Team GOP pocketed that win, deciding they could come back for more when the national debt was scheduled to run up against its statutory limit in summer 2011. That debt ceiling crisis did, indeed, result in substantial additional spending cuts.

The 2013 calendar is reversed. The debt ceiling fight happened early in the year, and the Obama administration—by standing firm and refusing to negotiate—got through it without giving up anything. Just a few weeks earlier they'd won substantial tax increases as part of the fiscal cliff drama. That's left Republicans craving a win, and craving a fight.

The bad news is that this means the odds of a government shutdown are pretty high. The good news is that the tough negotiations that'll be needed to either avert or else end a government shutdown provide ample opportunity to resolve the problems associated with the sequester. For starters, however the appropriations dispute is resolved, it'll end up superseding sequestration in terms of how much money is spent overall.

The other aspect of sequestration is that it doesn't just cut spending; it cuts it in a very inflexible way. Agencies are supposed to cut each "activity" they undertake by the same amount rather than setting priorities. When tried in the past, this has led to such absurdities as a mandate to "scrape 5 percent less poop" off each navigational buoy in the Chesapeake Bay. It works that way specifically because sequestration was supposed be onerous, in order to encourage Congress to agree on deficit reduction. But Congress could easily grant agencies more flexibility about how to allocate the cuts. Once an agreement is reached on spending levels, sticking with inflexibility is pointless and won't give either side any leverage for anything.

There's no guarantee that Congress will do the right thing and let agencies allocate their money more rationally, but there's no reason not to. There will be one more month of posturing. March 27 is the real deadline, not March 1.

[mongers]

You know if someone well known hasn't already done this, there needs to be a song 'American Fail' 

[Sheilbh]

One of the most bleak lines I've read recently was a GOP Senate aide quoted in Politico as saying that they may need a shutdown just so some House Republicans can get it out of their system

[Darth Wagtaros]

I expect they'll rattle their sabers to look good for their supporters and then legislate it away for about two years.

[derspiess]

Two years?? More like 2 months.

[Razgovory]

One of the most bleak lines I've read recently was a GOP Senate aide quoted in Politico as saying that they may need a shutdown just so some House Republicans can get it out of their system

That's probably pretty close to the truth.

[CountDeMoney]

One of the most bleak lines I've read recently was a GOP Senate aide quoted in Politico as saying that they may need a shutdown just so some House Republicans can get it out of their system

 

Oh, it'll go down, alright.

[derspiess]

The problem is, is that the way Obama has done it over the last four years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt so that we now have over $16 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $52,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

[Grey Fox]

You will never have to pay it back.

If the US stops buying things in China, the PCC will collapse.

[Valmy]

The problem is, is that the way Obama has done it over the last four years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt so that we now have over $16 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $52,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

The problem is we have been doing things this way for 30 years.  The debt crisis has been looming for awhile now, not sure why it is only the latest guy who gets the blame...oh and call me silly but doesn't Congress control things like the budget?

Anyway the plan seems pretty clear to me, we will tank the currency eventually to handle the debt.  No paying back will ever be done seriously, if we were interested in being serious about the debt crisis we would have handled back in the 90s and early 2000's when we had the chance.

[derspiess]

The debt crisis has been looming for awhile now, not sure why it is only the latest guy who gets the blame

Excellent point.

[MadImmortalMan]

The problem is, is that the way Obama has done it over the last four years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt so that we now have over $16 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $52,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

The problem is we have been doing things this way for 30 years.  The debt crisis has been looming for awhile now, not sure why it is only the latest guy who gets the blame...oh and call me silly but doesn't Congress control things like the budget?

Anyway the plan seems pretty clear to me, we will tank the currency eventually to handle the debt.  No paying back will ever be done seriously, if we were interested in being serious about the debt crisis we would have handled back in the 90s and early 2000's when we had the chance.

We seemed to be fairly on track in the late 90s. I know some of that was inflated revenues due to the dotcom boom but still.

[Valmy]

The debt crisis has been looming for awhile now, not sure why it is only the latest guy who gets the blame

Excellent point.

Now don't get me wrong I think Obama is a bad President, he is not exactly fighting to address the issue at all, but history suggests few of the others would have done so either.

My opinion is that right now the effort to stabilize and pay for the debt would be so politically painful (and therefore probably not politically possible) that one of two things are true:

1. The plan is to inflate our way out, a tried and true method to sustain irresponsible policies

2. The plan is to hope that somehow magical fairies of some sort intervene, like suddenly the US experiences a sustained period of outrageous economic growth and sweeps the problem away for everybody.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It would be wise to pencil in significant inflation IMO, it is the tool which will be used to deal with the debt.

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-ask-52-000-share-national-debt-152005364--politics.html

Fifty-two thousand dollars could, among other things, buy you NFL season tickets for nearly 67 years and groceries for seven years, and make for a hefty down payment on a house. So Republicans argue in a new infographic released by Speaker John Boehner's office on Wednesday morning, part of their effort to highlight Democratic spending amid the growing national debt.

According to the chart, if the $16 trillion national debt were divided among every man, woman and child, each person would receive $52,000—an amount Republicans are highlighting on Wednesday, the 1,400th day since the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a budget.

President Barack Obama has been publicly pressuring House Republicans to raise taxes on the nation's wealthiest and some corporations as part of a budget deal. In the absence of a budget passed by Congress, federal agencies will face a sequester—across-the-board spending cuts—March 1.

Republicans issued a statement along with Wednesday's graphic calling on Democrats to do their part to avoid the sequester.

"Republicans voted twice to replace the president's sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms. And—for the third year in a row—the House will pass a budget that promotes economic growth and addresses our debt crisis. Now we need Senate Democrats and President Obama to do the same," Republicans state on Boehner's website.

Republicans will be using the hashtags #1400days and #NoDemBudget on Twitter on Wednesday to promote their message.