Like 800,000 other Americans, I’ve found myself with a lot of free time lately. About 72 hours’ worth of it so far, give or take a few eight-hour increments. Yes, I am considered a non-essential federal employee, and like many of my fellow desk jockeys I’ve been furloughed during the federal government’s shutdown. Having found a lot of “me time,” I’ve been keeping myself occupied. I sleep in, eat lunch, take naps, and forget what day it is. I also surf the web a lot, mainly to find out what the news is. After all, if the shutdown suddenly ends while I’m stepping over Ramen noodle boxes, I’m going to need to work a shower into my new routine.
Those of you with essential jobs may be aware that the federal government shut down on October 1st because the United States House of Representatives and Senate could not agree on a continuing resolution to fund the government. The Republican-held House wants a resolution that defunds the Affordable Care Act, and the Democrat-held Senate and President Obama will have none of that. There are two results to this impasse: 1) one-third of the federal government remains unfunded and gets to stay home until they work this mess out; and 2) seemingly all of America rushes onto Facebook to publicly announce that they have absolutely no clue how the U.S. Government functions.
Allow me to explain. After rising early one afternoon to peruse the latest of Facebook’s many cat videos, I began noticing a common theme among my virtual friends’ postings: the legality of the House of Representatives in not funding the Affordable Care Act. “The ACA,” they said collectively, “has been passed by Congress, signed by the President, and survived a court challenge! The House has tried 40 times to repeal it and it failed each time! What they’re doing by not funding the ACA is unprecedented and unconstitutional! The House is illegally breaking its own rules, and they’ve shut down the entire government!”
Now, I might be paid (not now, though) to be a health care policy expert, but I got here by virtue of starting as an aide in a state legislature and winding along a career path in health advocacy much in the same way a speeding car winds its way through a forest. I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours watching and participating in the workings of my state legislature and Congress. I know that irrespective of the policy implications of the shutdown, much of what’s being said in social media about it simply isn’t true.
And this is the point at which I experienced a delusion. You see, as an analyst I suffer from the side effects of thinking that people are thankful to hear what I know. Thus, I cheerfully tried correcting these errors. “What the House is doing is in fact Constitutional,” I wrote. “It is the mandate of the House and Senate to create, pass, review, amend, and repeal laws. Therefore, both the House and Senate may seek to repeal legislation regardless of the fact it had been previously passed by Congress and signed into law by the President; survived court challenges; or there have already been 40 unsuccessful attempts to repeal it. The House also is mandated to set the budget, and it is their prerogative to fund laws at zero dollars if they do not agree with it; this has happened many times before, and this process is one of the checks and balances of our government. Also, the Constitution states that the two chambers get to set their own procedural rules, so these rules cannot be subject to federal law and may be changed at any time and for any reason at the will of the chamber’s majority party; in fact, the very concept of ‘legality’ only loosely applies to chamber rules. Finally, Obama is not at fault for the shutdown. As President, he is the head of the National Park Service and at this point is only responsible for what may or may not be the unnecessary closings of certain national historic sites, parks, and monuments. Ultimately, the shutdown is a negotiation matter the responsibility for which belongs to both the House and Senate, and not just the House.”
I didn’t even get the chance to say, “Good job, Matt! Now there’ll never be another argument on Facebook!” before the blast hit me. I may as well have pronounced that cat videos are a waste of time. To make a long story short, every fact I presented got ruthlessly picked apart like grandma’s Hummel collection at her estate sale. Of course, I just thought people weren’t getting my points, so I took the time to reword things to help them understand better. But for some reason that didn’t work, either. It only made people start ranting at me about the pros and cons of the ACA, where once again my professional knowledge sure didn’t help my popularity. Finally, exhausted from my quest to bring knowledge to the masses for the better part of a day, I gave up to survey my keep: the wreckage of a thousand well-intentioned Facebook exchanges lay before me, and about half the people I know now refuse to talk to me. Then my wife reminded me that nobody likes a know-it-all.
I wonder what happened. I wasn’t telling people anything they didn’t already learn in high school. Could the majority of educated American adults really lack a basic functional knowledge of how their own government worked? “Yes,” I tell myself now, but only because I‘m an optimist with a never-ending supply of faith. It had become clear that support and anger at the shutdown was not a matter of informed reason, it was largely a function of political leanings. I’d rather know my countrymen are ignorant the way their government works rather than entertain the thought that their personal politics could blind so many people to even the most basic of truths of high school civics.
Written by By Matt Haarington
Directory of Public Policy
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Matt, Thank you for explaining. People will criticize because it is not what they want to hear, the truth.
The truth scares people and instills fear.
On the other hand, this government shut-down is not fair to many individuals. Perhaps the Senate and House should be the ones to have their salaries frozen and try to function and pay bills for a few weeks without pay. Hmmmm….an agreement needs to be reached and I do think there should be laws or amendments to the current laws to state how long they can stall or just shut-down services.
Matt, certainly the essence of what you say is true in terms of correctly portraying the mechanics of government processes. I am troubled by your detached, ahistorical stance however that ignores the impact of this whole shutdown and why people are so enraged about this stinking process.
I say that because the American people are so disengaged from the political process due to a long history of forces trying to turn back the clock on voting rights and citizen involvement in their government.Ever since Mr. Obama was elected we have seen a conscious effort by racists in government to limit electoral participation and engagement in civic matters.
The recent SCOTUS decision on Citizens United and the pending one on individual caps on donations has contributed to such a crisis of cynicism that people just tune out on how to engage the system out of the belief, rooted in reality, that they have little influence on Congress and political priorities in this country.
The same groups that created this shutdown around the ACA have worked for years in gerrymandering state after state to assure safe voting districts that were mostly or all white and imprisoned marginalized communities in voting district prisons.
I appreciate your commentary and some of the humor included. But considering what I have raised above, your article, while perhaps reflecting a true lack of knowledge of the mechanics of governing by the general Facebook crowd, come across as snarky and privileged which I’m sure is not your intention.
Thanks for this post, Matt McBride. I’m writing from Australia and think other people here might also appreciate your explanation of the shutdown – so I’m going to share it to my Facebook page. I guess we have also picked up over here that people (understandably) feel very strongly about the situation, for a range of good reasons (including being put off work) but I do appreciate the clarity you provide about the constitutional aspects. Perhaps you could write another piece about possible ways through the impasse? We don’t have anything like the same situation in Australia, but we do have a similarly divisive issue in terms of our response to people seeking asylum, which rages around the reference to them as ‘illegal immigrants’, on the one hand, versus pursuing their human right to seek asylum, on the other. No one listens to patient explanations about this issue either or, if they do appear to listen, they subsequently revert to original position anyway. I don’t think we are primarily rational creatures, not when feelings run strong on an issue. Still, I think you should persist – even if it’s only for the sake of those like me who do not have the same emotional investment but do see the situation as important, and worrying…Joan Beckwith.
I wish I had gotten over here to do some reading sooner. In the face of such strong intellectual rebuttal from the FB community, I am sorely reminded of a certain late-night television program that set out to gauge American opinion on the state of healthcare in America. The dismaying results showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported the Affordable Care act, but only a tiny fraction of those surveyed were in favor of Obamacare. Oh darn… (I wonder what results such a survey on FB might garner!) 🙂