“Reminder: the main budgetary disagreement is over what the GOP considers ‘wasteful’ spending of about $16 million per year. The ongoing shutdown, which prevents the FAA from collecting airline taxes, is costing the Treasury more than $20 million per day.”
An estimated 70,000 people are out of work (FAA, construction at airports, related services). Airport inspectors (you know, government workers) are working without pay or reimbursement for their travel expenses. Meanwhile Congress has gone on vacation for the month.
Chris Weigant suggests the President make a speech. An excerpt:
This is unacceptable. This is beyond dysfunctional. This is, in fact, an outrage. So I’m giving Congress a grace period of precisely two days, to get their butts back to Washington to fix this problem immediately. If I don’t have a bill on my desk by the end of this Friday, I will instruct my Attorney General to immediately put every member of Congress on the “no-fly” list. To be blunt, if they can’t find the time to fund the F.A.A. and prefer to take weeks off on vacation instead, then they will not be allowed to use the F.A.A.’s services in the meantime. Period.
Fallows adds:
This episode is such a flagrant illustration of “let them eat cake”-ism on the part of legislators — tens of thousands of families suddenly with no paychecks because of our pouting! hundreds of millions lost to the Treasury! but we don’t care! — and of deep dysfunction in our system, that perhaps it will have some turning-point effect. On the other hand, probably not.