Federal workers have now missed two paychecks during the longest government shutdown in American history. This abject failure of leadership has not only plunged hundreds of thousands of government employees into economic uncertainty and hardship — it is also having very real, and growing, impacts on our economy as a whole.
Thankfully, there are small signs of progress in the Senate. Lawmakers may finally be moving toward action as frustration and economic repercussions from the shutdown mount.
This week, Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was optimistic about the U.S. economy in interviews with Fox Business and CNN. But tellingly, he acknowledged that we run the risk of zero growth in the first quarter if the shutdown lingers in the coming months.
Earlier this month, the White House doubled its projected impact of the shutdown on economic growth, predicting that the US will lose 0.13 percentage points of quarterly growth each week that the impasse continues.
Here in Maine, the personal and institutional effects of the shutdown have been very real. Hundreds of Coast Guard members don’t know when they’ll receive their next paycheck, rental assistance for low-income household is at risk, people using USDA-backed mortgages can’t close on their new homes, the federal courts have run out of money, flights are being delayed — the list goes on.
Maine Senate President Troy Jackson has introduced emergency legislation aimed at helping federal workers in the state who must work without pay during the shutdown, a group Jackson’s office estimates to be over 1,000. The bill would provide a state guarantee on private, interest-free loans issued by banks or credit unions, with many of these local institutions already stepping up to help affected federal workers in the state.
Jackson’s bill, modeled after legislation in Connecticut, is well intentioned and may be helpful as the federal shutdown drags on. But the bill needs more analysis, particularly in understanding what it could potentially cost the State of Maine if federal workers, still shrouded in uncertainty for which they bear no responsibility, run into problems paying the loans back.
The real solution to this growing problem facing federal workers, affected businesses and our economy as a whole, of course, would be for both the president and Congress to remove themselves from their seemingly intractable positions. It’s not too late to turn this stalemate into an opportunity.
Trump, ultimately, precipitated this shutdown. He said he would be “ proud” to shutdown the government over the border security fight. He and the considerable power he wields with the Republican base are the reason Mitch McConnell hesitated until this week to even bring funding bills to the floor for debate in the US Senate.
Two competing shutdown bills from Republicans and Democrats both failed Thursday, but subsequent calls for compromise from bipartisan group of 16 senators — including Maine’s Susan Collins and Angus King — offer some hope.
Given his proposal last week to trade wall funding for short-term immigration protections, the president seems increasingly ready to make some sort of deal. Democrats should ditch their strategy of absolute resistance and look for meaningful, long-term immigration wins in exchange for additional funding for border security, including physical barriers along the southern border. Yes, that means some wall funding.
Admittedly, that is a tradeoff some Democrats have been willing to make at several points over the last few years, only to be met by Republican opposition or inaction. So we’ve been down a similar road before. But with a Trump White House defined in part by inconsistency and unpredictability, it’s worth another try.
The president’s initial compromise offer wasn’t good enough in terms of lasting immigration reforms and protections. But it did, at the very least, indicate a willingness to inch toward the middle (or was meant to project such a willingness). Democratic leadership should do the same.
At a certain point, our workers and our economy cannot afford the rigid, partisan inflexibility that has defined this seemingly endless shutdown.