By Anne Craig | Planet Waves
At midnight on Sept. 30, the federal government shut down for the first time in almost 18 years, closing national parks, putting some 800,000 employees on unpaid leave, impairing the functioning of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and numerous other agencies, and making the websites of most government agencies non-functional.
Consequences will continue to unfold over the next couple of weeks as programs like Head Start and WIC (supplemental food assistance for women and young children) run out of state-level funds. The estimated cost to the taxpayers is $300 million a day.
Congressional Republicans, who got us here out of terror over the possibility that grateful health-care recipients might join in rejecting the Republican agenda, spent Wednesday offering up piecemeal proposals that would re-open war memorials and fund cancer treatment for sick kids.
A growing number of them began to break ranks and criticize their ‘kamikaze’ colleagues from the Tea Party detachment. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul suggested everybody drink coffee together.
Irish coffee, maybe. Reports surfacing on Twitter over the weekend, suggesting that more than a few representatives were fortifying themselves with booze as the clock ticked toward shutdown, received hardly any follow-up coverage aside from a mention by Rachel Maddow and articles in London’s Daily Mail.
Democrats want Congress to pass a ‘clean’ continuing resolution that will reopen the government across the board without restrictions on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which was passed more than three years ago. Republicans have failed more than 40 times to overturn the law through normal channels. ACA websites, which went live October 1, have been swarmed by people seeking health-care options.
Analysts are pointing to gerrymandered districts, in which Republicans are unlikely to face any challenges (except from primary opponents even further to the right), as one reason the Tea Party crew remains confident. Wall Street interests, meanwhile, are exasperated with the shutdown, leading to speculation that deep-pocket interests have lost control over the Tea Party they instigated and nurtured.
Certainly the far-right scream machine that has been ramping up the fear of Creeping Socialism ever since Obama took office bears considerable blame for the grandstanding now taking place, from the Ted Cruz marathon speech to the (possibly drunken) battle cry of “Let’s roll!” heard on the House floor over the weekend.
Meanwhile, business interests — and President Obama as well — are saying that the real crisis will come in about two weeks if Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, which could cause an economic tailspin that would crush the modest progress made toward recovery from the 2008 recession.
Way to crash the plane, dudes.