THOMAS HOBBES, a 17th-century philosopher, famously remarked that life without government would be “nasty, brutish and short”. Fortunately, no such fate awaits Americans should the federal government shut down on October 1st. On this occasion, a short shutdown would be more of a scratch.
Most government spending still flows in a shutdown. So-called “mandatory” outlays—on Social Security payments and federal health-care programmes—continue, as do interest payments on debt. Only the third of the budget requiring a yearly rubber-stamp from Congress is frozen (see chart).
That spending, though, includes the wages of almost all government employees. Fortunately, those deemed essential to protect life or property—like, say, air-traffic controllers, or nuclear-submarine engineers—go on working. This rule is generous enough (or government business important enough) that at the peak of the shutdown in 2013 only two in five government employees stopped work. Of those, just under half returned to their offices once government lawyers judged that a law passed immediately before the shutdown allowed most Department of...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1Ms6WxA
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