J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pauses as he addresses reporters about efforts to pass appropriations bills and avert a looming government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023. He is joined at right by House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Rep. Monica de la Cruz, R-Texas.
Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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It’s Sunday morning. Is the United States of America still in business?
More to the point, are millions of Americans still on the job and getting paid to do that job? And are all the many more millions of people who rely on those who aren’t getting paid to do their important jobs for Americans still getting the services they need to survive?
There are so many questions to ask this morning, assuming the government has been shut down by an out-of-control, bordering on stark-raving-mad House of Representatives that is not being led by its speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
They are the kinds of questions citizens should ask of everyone seeking their votes for higher office. In short, “Will you think of us, we the people, the folks who make this country work and who work every day to make this country great, before you act or don’t act on our behalf?”
On the other hand, this is Sunday morning and it is possible that “miracles which do happen” actually did happen, and McCarthy found a way to corral the crazies in a way that allowed the government to be funded so that bad things would not happen to millions of good people.
I hope, as do most sane and clear-thinking Americans, that the House and Senate found a way to keep our government open for business — the people’s business.
Either way, what we have witnessed the past few weeks as Congress grappled with whether to do exactly the opposite of why it was elected— and that is to make government work— has been frustrating, anger-provoking and disappointing to the max for most Americans. It’s also been angst-producing, nerve-wracking and confidence-in-our-democracy-and-its-institutions diminishing.
And most of us just don’t deserve to be treated that way!
And, yet, here we are. Strung out, worn out and almost out of our minds on Sunday morning because we didn’t and couldn’t know whether the United States of America would try, once again, to commit a self-destructive act all by ourselves, in full view of our enemies and all of those who wish us ill.
Why do we continue to let Congress do this to us?
We don’t have to look far for the answers. Walk next door to your neighbor’s house. Go downtown to your doctor’s office and talk to those in the waiting room and the examination room. Find at least one person in every foursome on the golf course.
If you look closely enough with eyes wide open and actually listen to their words, you will understand that there are many of our fellow citizens whose worldview resembles more a tumble through the keyhole of Alice’s Wonderland than the wonderful world that our Founding Fathers gave us to perfect.
To so many of those folks, the idea of shutting down the government, storming the Capitol, threatening judges, elected officials and poll workers just for doing their jobs is a good idea. And no one can convince them otherwise.
That attitude has empowered the GOP-controlled House, which sees it as a calling, to gum up the government works to the point where government will not and cannot work. They do it just to prove to everyone else that government does not work.
And that, my friends, is no way to run a railroad. And it certainly is no way to treat hard-working, patriotic and caring Americans who want, at the very least, for government to keep its doors open so this grand experiment of ours has a chance to survive.
Our country will survive this shutdown if it has happened. And most Americans will survive the repercussions that will follow as people don’t get paid, services don’t get rendered and bills are put to the side to be paid, maybe, at a later date.
And if the shutdown did not happen, most Americans will also survive the angst and overcome the anger that these malice-driven games have engendered.
Notice I say “most,” because there will and always are casualties from such events. Such casualties were foreseeable by Congress, and theydid not have to happen.
What the rest of uswhy we continue to let this madness happen. — the overwhelming majority of us— need to do is ask ourselves
And then we should vote, when we get the chance, like we never want it to happen again.
