U.S. Politics: Don't call it a shutdown

[DanteGabriel]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/09/2730651/how-racism-caused-the-shutdown/

My takeaway is "we should just let them secede for good this time instead of letting their resentment over the Civil War poison us for another 150 years." But that's probably uncharitable.

[Eira Seren]

For some reason the direction this thread has taken reminded me about the item I heard on the radio about US adults being woefully behind other industrial democracies on computers, math, and literacy.

And maybe that can be traced to the anti-intellectualism, devaluation of expertise, and suspicion of facts that pervades our culture. Maybe we as a society are just too dumb, or at least too beholden to the dumbest among us, to elect smart, sane leaders.

This. :agree:

What you don't seem to understand is that when the federal government borrows, it is not the same as when an individual or family borrows. An individual has to live within his means because he is mortal and has only so many productive years. If you take out a loan to buy a car, the creditor should take into account income and years left before retirement age. The loan and the interest are expected to be repaid in a finite amount of time.

The US government on the other hand, is basically immortal. Only the interest absolutely has to be paid. We never have to get to a zero balance. This is why deficit spending in a recession is not only possible, but positive. Austerity when the economy is bad only takes demand out of the economy and makes things worse. When the economy is good, that's when you want to cut spending and pay down the national debt. Like Clinton did. Bush, did the opposite and went into deficit spending to finance war and tax cuts at the same time. That is why when the recession hit, we were already in a large amount of debt and had to go deeper.

Now the deficit is actually falling and fast. Going into default and sucking billions of dollars out of the economy in a months time would be insane. It would hurt the economy and actually raise debt and deficits. Lowering the GDP + ruining our credit rate and being charged higher interest rates does NOT = fiscal responsibility.

Also, this! The Treason Party, who thought it would be a good idea to shut down the government for a couple of weeks in order to lower the deficit. . . .

Come election time, I plan to remember this.

Funnily enough, the Kochs felt compelled to send a letter out denying any involvement in the push to a shutdown.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/koch-we-never-support-defunding-obamacare

Kind of jarring to see the letterhead: "Koch Companies Public Sector." Seems like it would be synonymous with the Republican Party at this point.

And. . . . this.

I had to laugh when I read this. Someone must be putting pressure on them. Since their money comes from oil, my guess is an international influence. . .

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Does Scalia type his decisions in ALLCAPS?

I am most curious about the bolded. Folks could be forgiven for not know that there is a supposed dual mandate as inflation has been under control and unemployment has been a persistent pain.

That has been true for the past 30 years or so, but it wasn't always the case (ask some of the folks here about living through stagflation - my understanding is that it wasn't much of a treat). I'm sort of divided. Both the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/business/economy/for-yellen-a-focus-on-reducing-unemployment.html?hp) and WSJ profiles (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303918804579109500690940692?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories ) give a lot more information on Yellen. Though she has historically been an advocate of easy money policy to increase employment, it seems that she also doesn't have a lot of tolerance for inflation, either.

[lokisnow]

"Just because the Dodgers had more hits, scored more runs, and won more games doesn't make them right. You can help them see that. And if it means the country will be deprived of its national pastime--well, the Dodgers only have themselves to blame.

Help us avoid the Dodgers cynical shutdown of Major League Baseball. Bring the National League Pennant home to Atlanta today!"

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/10/08/applying-government-shutdown-logic-to-the-baseball-playoffs/

[Mudguard]

They haven't selectively stopped payments. They've shut down parts of the government. It's not the same.

It's based on what the Treasury has actually said. They have neither the legal authority nor the means to do so.

How about applying some common sense? Have they stopped payment to certain federal employees? Have they stopped payments to families of soldiers killed in action? And on and on. Yet you maintain that they have not and cannot selectively stop payments? Ok...

As I stated before, I agree that they lack the legal authority to do so, but lacking the technical ability? Come on.

[Fez]

I think they've said something about not having a system where you can assign priorities to payments and then the system figures out how to make the payments according to your priorities. I believe that to be true, but who cares? Such a system is not needed to selectively stop payments, which they already do all the time.

As I stated above, there's ample evidence that they can selectively stop payments. It's ridiculous to think otherwise. If they want to stop farm subsidies, medicare payments, social security payments, or whatever, they could technically do so.

Is it your position that they cannot selectively stop payments? If so, please provide some rational reason for your position. If it's based on some random quote now being used out of context, let's see the quote.

When payments are stopped, for instance for the end of a government contract, what happens is that the agency that was in the contract no longer submits a payment request to the Treasury computers that process payments. Treasury itself can't stop the payments (if they suspect some sort of fraud, they'll order the agency in question to no longer submit payment requests on that account). For the government to stop all payments other than interest payments, it would need to go to every single government agency and cancel the requests it has going in to Treasury computers.

Ignoring for the moment that this action would result in the government being exposed to probably literally over 100 million lawsuits (all a lot of them would probably be condensed into class actions), it would take a lot of people working to ensure that all these payments were halted; which they can't do during a shutdown. Furthermore, revenues are enough so that the government could continue to make some payments beyond just interest payments; but how does it decide which ones to make? And implementing those decisions at the agency level would take an awful lot of staffers who are currently furloughed.

And all this ignores the fact that payment prioritization is illegal under current law (and long-term would be an enormous concession of legislative power to the executive), would still led to increased borrowing costs, and would wreck absolute havoc on the US economy. The only good it does would mitigate the damage to the overall world economy to some extent; although putting the US back in recession would still do a lot of harm to other countries.

[Mudguard]

When payments are stopped, for instance for the end of a government contract, what happens is that the agency that was in the contract no longer submits a payment request to the Treasury computers that process payments. Treasury itself can't stop the payments (if they suspect some sort of fraud, they'll order the agency in question to no longer submit payment requests on that account). For the government to stop all payments other than interest payments, it would need to go to every single government agency and cancel the requests it has going in to Treasury computers.

Ignoring for the moment that this action would result in the government being exposed to probably literally over 100 million lawsuits (all a lot of them would probably be condensed into class actions), it would take a lot of people working to ensure that all these payments were halted; which they can't do during a shutdown. Furthermore, revenues are enough so that the government could continue to make some payments beyond just interest payments; but how does it decide which ones to make? And implementing those decisions at the agency level would take an awful lot of staffers who are currently furloughed.

And all this ignores the fact that payment prioritization is illegal under current law (and long-term would be an enormous concession of legislative power to the executive), would still led to increased borrowing costs, and would wreck absolute havoc on the US economy. The only good it does would mitigate the damage to the overall world economy to some extent; although putting the US back in recession would still do a lot of harm to other countries.

Yeah, as I've stated time and time again, I don't think this would be legal. I also think it would be a horrible idea. I'm just refuting the assertion that it's technically impossible.

So, if you want to stop all medicare payments, it's not impossible from what you've described to have HHS or whichever department in charge of medicare payments simply stop putting in requests. Again, totally illegal and a horrible idea, but technically not impossible. And honestly, it doesn't seem that hard to implement. On HHS's end, just stop processing all the requests.

Also, when you assert that Treasury cannot stop the payment requests from being paid out, are you sure that the limitation is not one of authority and procedure, rather than an actual technical limitation? I have a hard time believing that there is no mechanism at the Treasury for simply putting a hold on a payment.

[TrackerNeil]

My takeaway is "we should just let them secede for good this time instead of letting their resentment over the Civil War poison us for another 150 years." But that's probably uncharitable.

Sign me up.

[Fez]

Also, when you assert that Treasury cannot stop the payment requests from being paid out, are you sure that the limitation is not one of authority and procedure, rather than an actual technical limitation? I have a hard time believing that there is no mechanism at the Treasury for simply putting a hold on a payment.

Its my understanding that there really is a technical limitation, the Treasury computers just aren't designed to have any inputted directions. They are essentially just giant calculators that process requests put in by various agencies and move the appropriate funds from one account to another. If a hold needs to be put on a payment, its put on the agency accounts (since the main Treasury accounts don't directly make payouts, but rather just they transfer funds to the agency accounts that make the payouts, including other Treasury accounts).

I'm sure new software could be written that could change that, but that would take time and money that Treasury doesn't currently have.