Shut out, shut in; shut down, shut up

Shut out Mexico, US President Donald Trump insists. It had been his campaign promise from back in 2016 to “Build that wall” along the 1,954 miles (3,145 km) US border with Mexico to keep out illegal entrants into the US. We’ll make Mexico pay for it, Trump boasted then (BBC, Jan. 26, 2016). How could he have ever expected Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to happily say “Si!” to a wall pre-paid by Mexico to shut out Mexico from the US? “Mexico doesn’t believe in walls,” Nieto expectedly said on national television, and of course he would not spend up to $25 billion to shut Mexico out (BBC, Jan. 26, 2017).

Then shut in the US, Trump said. “Our country is under siege,” he said. For Trump, the border situation amounts to an invasion by criminals that can only be solved by more walls (AFP News, Jan 11, 2019). And so Trump had included an initial $5.7 billion in the national budget for his obsession to build The Wall. “Ninety percent of the heroin sold in America floods across from our southern border, he warned (washingtonpost.com, Jan. 10, 2019). True or not true? Media fact-checkers reported that Customs and Border Protection data show virtually all drugs confiscated by border security happen at legal ports of entry, rather than at open border spaces where a wall might be built (Ibid.).

But Trump’s budget inclusion was stopped in Congress. “I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a televised message (Ibid.). And the US government has been shut down since Dec. 20 — 24 days now — the longest shutdown in US history since the 21-day stretch in 1995-1996, under President Bill Clinton, whose Medicare program met Republican objections (AFP News, Jan. 11, 2019).

“Shut down the government” sounds chilling. A government shutdown physically closes the nonessential offices of the government like national parks and national museums, and halts work for federal employees except in “essential” areas like the military, health, the Federal Reserve, Post Office, etc. According to a fact sheet released by the Democratic staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee, “more than 420,000 federal employees were expected to work without pay” and “more than 280,000 federal employees would be placed on furlough, effectively on leave without pay” (investopedia.com, Jan. 12, 2019). Disrupted government services and increased costs to the government due to lost labor during the 16-day 2013 shutdown over Obamacare had “taken $993 billion out of the economy and shaved at least 0.6% off annualized fourth-quarter 2013 GDP growth, according to Standard and Poor’s (ABC News, Sept. 12, 2017).

In the US, a government shutdown occurs when Congress fails to pass sufficient appropriation bills or continuing resolutions to