Tactic not free of cost

I’m rather sure that every one of our elected members of Congress from Arkansas said at one time or another during their most recent campaigns that they would work to save taxpayers’ money by cutting out waste spending by the federal government. Sadly, both of our senators and three of our four House representatives (all except Rep. Steve Womack) voted last week to shut down the federal government to make a point they knew was bound to fail.

It is well-known that successful votes to shut down the national government by denying funding are incredibly costly—one estimate by Standard & Poor’s was that the over two-week shutdown in 2013 cost the U.S. economy $24 billion. Less known is the fact that threats to shut down the government are also costly. Every time this happens, and it goes down to the wire, all federal offices have to make two contingency funding plans—one in case the cutoff happens, and another if the shutdown vote fails.

The recent vote involved the start of the federal fiscal year—Oct. 1, 2015. Federal offices, including military units here and currently deployed in combat zones overseas, had to spend valuable time away from their missions figuring out who would be “essential” and thus still paid, and who would not fit that category and thus perhaps face telling their families that they would have to try for food stamps for lack of a paycheck should the defunding vote pass. Needless to say, this repeated experience—possibly coming up again in two months— is not good for morale.

This is not the proper way to treat federal employees, civilian or military, and our representatives should realize that this tactic is not cost-free. They should do their job and pass laws which get enacted, not vote constantly on meaningless measures to make some point for future elections. CHARLES HARTWIG

Jonesboro