‘All My Children’

They work in Washington

You know the extremists in one party or t’ other have left the reservation when this column starts agreeing with Paul Krugman. (See to your right.)

The Eeyore of economics—the dismal-est of the dismal science community—might give his leftist extremist friends a little too much credit in this week’s offering, but he pretty much got the handful of right-wing extremists correct. This too: Where will this end?

Steve Womack, R-Common Sense, also got it right:

The Arkansas congressman said the goings-on in Washington, D.C., these days seems like a soap opera. On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives left for the weekend without any progress on avoiding a government shutdown at month’s end. They couldn’t even get a defense appropriations bill passed.

Six Republicans (including one who changed his vote in a procedural move so he could call the bill back later) joined with all the Democrats to keep the standoff going. Which, strangely or not, is the Republican Party’s fault, because it has the majority, if a very thin one. The opposition party isn’t expected to make it easy for the majority.

And if the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, even asked Democrats to help, those four or five right-wing hostage-takers in Congress would probably vote him out of the speaker’s chair.

“You know what I’d call it?” Representative Womack said to the press. “I think it’s a great title: ‘All My Children.’”

That might be a slight against children.

Proving once again that at least Arkansas still sends sane people to Congress, the House delegation was quoted in the papers last week about this standoff. And the adults aren’t happy.

Rep. Rick Crawford: Some members of his party are willing to “take out their own team without a plan.”

“I understand we want to reduce spending,” he told the papers. “There’s no question about it. We just rolled over $33 trillion in debt. Seventy-odd percent of our budget is mandatory spending. It’s not appropriated. These kinds of maneuvers won’t help that problem.”

Rep. French Hill from Little Rock on the Republican outliers: “In my view, they are arguing against their own objective. They are contributing to an end result that would be principally a Joe Biden-Kevin McCarthy spending level, but with much less conservative policy riders attached to those bills because we are not getting them passed.”

The good news is there are more French Hills and Bruce Westermans and Rick Crawfords and Steve Womacks than there are Marjorie Taylor Greenes or Matt Rosendales or Eli Cranes.

But will the vast majority of the majority be able to govern? That’s the $33 trillion question.

There might be those who think about all this government shutdown talk: Good! That’ll save the taxpayers a little money anyway! That never happens.

Every time the government has a shutdown, it’s never saved a dime. Because the resolution that eventually opens government back up always includes sections that give government workers their back pay. For work that was never done, mind you.

Which means that taxpayers eventually dish out money for government workers to sit at home—an unexpected paid vacation. Then there are all the costs associated with closing government down (putting up signs at parks, taking them down again; canceling direct deposits for a week, getting them going again) that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. You think government costs a lot now? Wait ‘til it closes.

Come to think, this is worse than a soap opera. At least that stuff comes on free TV.