A (18:11)
Hey everyone, this is Tangle Managing editor Ari Weitzman here giving the take today while Isaac's abroad traveling. So first and foremost, the government shutting down I don't think is a Republican problem or a Democrat problem? I see it more as a Congress problem. It seems the only way Congress can come together to do anything is to hold itself hostage, each time saying it's actually the left or the right foot that's about to step off the cliff. Now, for the first time since 1995, we've tumbled over the edge. So what does that mean for us? First, essential workers like TSA agents and Border Patrol and select military personnel will continue to work without pay until the shutdown is over, at which point they will receive back pay. The roughly 40% of the federal workforce, or 750,000 people who are non essential workers. So curators at the Smithsonian, workplace safety officers at osha, administrators at hud, service members of the National Guard, scientists at NASA, so on and so on and so on. They'll have to stay home and their households will lose their paychecks for an indeterminate amount of time. Furthermore, potentially millions of government contractors across all departments, from janitors to IT professionals and again, on and on, they will miss out on their work. The programs that these employees run through their federal mandates will all be halted. Benefit payments will continue to go out, though. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs or SNAP distributions will eventually stop getting delivered. But others will be limited. National parks will partially close. The FDA will halt new drug reviews and routine food inspections. The NIH will not issue new grants. The DOJ will curtail or postpone civil litigations. The Department of Education will not issue new grants. We're looking at civil rights complaints and etc. All in all, analysts estimate that this shutdown will cost roughly 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points of economic growth for each week that it lasts, though those losses can eventually be recouped, American citizens are right to look at the situation and demand accountability. Personally, I get tired of feeding into the charade and arguing about which party is more to blame. Let's be honest, a recalcitrantly dysfunctional system is at the root of the problem. But at the end of the day, government shutdowns aren't just the result of systemic inertia. Some individuals are always at fault. In this case, I'd point to three people specifically. Let's start with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who ultimately is the one who has his hand on the button. The House just passed a Clean Continuing resolution, or cr, and he's opting not to take it. Despite being in a minority, working off the same budget Democrats in the House and Senate approved a year ago and declaring the importance of keeping the government open just this last March when Republicans recently threatened a government shutdown, Schumer has decided that this is the moment to maximize his leverage, pushing for assurances for NIH funding and hundreds of millions of dollars in enhanced ACA benefits. My issue isn't that Schumer is taking government funding hostage with a letter of demands. As Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, it's Schumer's job as minority leader to push for his party's agenda. He has leverage right now, and it's fair for him to use it. But my question is, why didn't he offer any resistance earlier that would help his position now? Before Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill act, when they were torn over whether to reject Biden's budget or pass the buck to Elon Musk and Doge to try to find budget cuts, Schumer decided to play the role of the hero, valiantly fighting to keep the government operational under the threat of firings and rescissions and dubious executive branch budget cuts. Schumer offered no resistance in Congress. Each time Trump flexed executive authority, he had only words when the OPM shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he offered remarks when the State Department guttered usaid. And of course, he touted his infamous, very strong letter when Trump faced off with Harvard University. Now, when he does choose to take something to the Senate floor, he has nothing new to ask Republicans to meet him halfway on. Instead, Schumer is reaching back to a Covid era benefit extension that is set to expire at the end of the year. Why are an ACA benefit extension and unfrozen NIH funding the only things Schumer is fighting for? Yes, extending these benefits will keep premiums lower for millions of US Citizens and likely be popular with Democratic voters. But there's no way Senate Republicans approve this extension, even if it means shutting down the government for weeks. The extension authorizes an increased level of funding that was supposed to be temporary for a program Republicans have historically opposed that also extends to legal immigrants. That's just not something Republicans are going to vote for, and Schumer knows that. That's why he's not banging the drum on the fundamentals of his argument. Instead, in public, he's basically begging Republicans to just come to the table. That reduces the strength of his position and makes the minority leader seem more motivated by wanting to appear to resist than by a desire to achieve his stated goals. That's Schumer. Second person that I would blame is House Speaker Mike Johnson. Remember when Republicans elected Johnson speaker he oversaw a laddered appropriations process that broke appropriations for the following year into batches. When Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown in the now routine December funding showdown, he held his caucus together to approve a mostly clean CR that denied most Democratic requests. This time it's a clean CR out of the House, no strings attached, just funding the government at normal until we get to the next funding deadline. This constant kicking the can is exactly what the House Freedom of Congress fought against when it ousted his predecessor, Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Where are those appropriation bills that Johnson committed to when he took the gavel? Does fiscal responsibility just somehow matter less once you're the one in charge? I mean, to be fair to Johnson, he didn't invent punning on appropriations and depending on CRS to keep the government operational. That's long been what has happened at Congress. But Johnson did previously identify the issue and he did say he'd work to change it. Now he's perpetuating the problem. The House of Representatives might feel good about itself for just extending current levels of funding, passing a CR to keep the government open and sending it to the Senate to approve. But the optics are pretty hard to look at. Hundreds of thousands of people, government employees will be working without pay until they get back pay after the government reopens. Who knows when that will be? Millions of other people are going to be furloughed at home without any job, without any pay at all. Meanwhile, 535 US representatives will be fully paid and they're on recess until October 7th. Last but not least, President Donald Trump. I don't have a whole tirade about the President's role here. My point is actually pretty simple, and I think it's unavoidable. Why should Democrats trust the executive branch to spend the budget Congress approves seriously? Even after Elon Musk has left his position as contract canceler in chief, OMB Director Russell Vogt is promising to lay off employees who work on programs the President doesn't like. And of course, the shadow of future rescissions packages still looms over Congress. Of course Democrats are going to ask for assurances. If the last year's budget is always up for renegotiation, then every continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels is always going to raise the question of what current levels even means. Trump simply hasn't given Democrats any reason to believe that their negotiations are in good faith. Democrats are reasonable to take every opportunity to try to get Republicans to commit to something, even if they were late to realize that, and even if they are choosing a questionable hill to die on. Republicans are reasonable to flex their majority and stand a line, even if their party leader in the White House is apt to change his mind about what that line is in the future. It's hemming and hawing and horse training. It's an ugly process that will probably end with another CR in unfrozen NIH funding. But hey, that's politics and it's relatively normal. What isn't normal, though, is both parties failing to come to the table until after actual damage is done. That's totally unreasonable and it's negligent to the rest of the country they purportedly represent. Until something fundamental in our politics changes. Governance by brinkmanship is unfortunately now the status quo. Hopefully this is just a matter of days, not weeks, before leaders come together on an obvious solution to the problems they're creating for the rest of us. For some reason, we had some members of staff who disagreed with me today, so I'm sending it over to Lindsey Knuth, our associate editor, to read today's staff dissent, which she co authored with Isaac Saul, who pitched in from abroad. Here's Lindsey. Thanks, Ari. This is Associate Editor Lindsey Knuth and.