In Praise of Government Shutdowns

by Roger L. Simon

Maybe I should have called this “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Government Shutdown”?

Not President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, apparently, because “Sixty Minutes,” of all places, informs us his country, Ukraine, would continue to get its munificent infusion of U.S. taxpayer cash in the midst of a shutdown.

And for what? A virtual stalemate between two corrupt countries.

We’re told Vladimir Putin must be stopped. Yes, he’s a despot, but we have made him arguably more popular than ever domestically as our president’s virtue-signaling energy policies have enriched his country as never before.

I’ve been to the region and seen it with my own eyes. Ukraine might be better than Russia, but only marginally. You smell the corruption everywhere. As for Crimea, it seemed Russian to me (admittedly, this was the late eighties, still Soviet times).

I stayed in the Hotel Yalta, where Stalin met with Roosevelt and Churchill to divide our world, and visited the homes of Anton Chekhov and Sergei Rachmaninoff, not to my knowledge, Ukrainians.

I was also being told by my assigned interpreter the Ukrainians had no business in Crimea because they were Nazis. I assumed the interpreter—obviously KGB—was propagandizing me. And he was.

Yet with very few questioning it, our money keeps flowing Zelenskyy’s way as if the Cold War never ended.

We’re in the midst of “stagflation” thanks to some indecipherable policies that have recently been dubbed “Bidenomics.”

Needless to say, we’re hearing calls for a government shutdown, mostly from those in the House Freedom Caucus.

To our friends in the mainstream media, shutting down the government is very baaaaad. Our country would implode, and with it, the globe. And the Republicans would, of course, be at fault.

President Joe Biden—the “race card” always at hand—is saying blacks will suffer most.

All of this is more than utter nonsense. It’s an outright lie.

Nothing much happens during a government shutdown, except that the many useless parts of the government are exposed, and the many bureaucrats of the Deep State are sent home for what amounts to an “all-expenses-paid” vacation when restitution is almost automatically made after the settlement.

Ironically, the last time we had a shutdown was during the Trump administration when it was Donald Trump who caved after 34 days. At issue was the president’s demand for funding for a border wall, which too many in Congress opposed. As I said, could it be more ironic than that?

This time, Freedom Caucus members are demanding that areas of expenditures be isolated, not lumped together for obscurity as they always are, so that Congress and the public would be able to see exactly how much is being spent on what.

What unbelievable chutzpah! Imagine that—trying to get our arms around the mind-boggling debt that soon will make interest payments our entire budget.

Sadly, prospects aren’t good for the Freedom Caucus, nor are they for the American people, who, if asked in the blind—without party affiliation and so forth—whether it would be a good idea to specify each area of expenditure in the federal budget, would likely vote in the affirmative by a vast majority.

We the People? Fuhgeddaboudit?

But We the People of Ukraine? Well, that’s another matter. A lot of folks over there could use a new car. But make sure it’s electric and American made.