Fear-mongering around crime failed spectacularly as a campaign strategy in the last midterm election.
Shutting down the federal government failed spectacularly as a legislative strategy during the last presidential administration.
That didn’t deter Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), from embracing both of these ill-fated plans of action, blithely convening a sideshow on crime in Chicago while their party continues recklessly steering the country toward a disastrous government shutdown.
It is undeniable that the United States currently is being held hostage by political performance artists who have no interest whatsoever in governing. GOP extremists in the House of Representatives are not only willing, but eager to disrupt vital services, endanger national security, crater the economy, and inflict needless hardship on the most vulnerable Americans — all to feed their own egos and raise their public profiles. Absent a coherent public policy agenda, their overriding concern is antagonizing their political adversaries and whipping up partisan hostility.
It would be a simple enough matter for Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to advance a clean continuing resolution that keeps the government functioning at the current level. Pathetically, McCarthy is unwilling to stand up to the most extreme members of his caucus and risk losing his position as speaker — a position that he has thus far squandered by pandering to conspiracy theorists and cynical opportunists.
The last government shutdown — the longest in history at 35 days, from Dec. 22, 2018 until Jan. 25, 2019 — cost the American economy at least $11 billion, including $3 billion in permanent losses, according to the Congressional Budget office. Then-President Donald Trump caused the shutdown, not because he didn’t get funding for the border wall he wanted, but because he was embarrassed by right-wing critics on television.
History will debate whether McCarthy’s dread of another humiliating floor fight over his speakership is an equally inane motive for inflicting chaos and hardship on the people he was elected to serve.
Legislation that funds the federal government expires this weekend and the government will shut down Sunday without action from lawmakers.
Saboteurs with a dismal vision for America
Meanwhile, a shutdown would mean at least 10,000 preschool children would be denied the education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services of Head Start, which is federally funded, and risk falling even further behind in school readiness. Small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs would lose a vital source of funding as the Small Business Administration is blocked from accepting, reviewing, or approving new business loans.
Infrastructure projects that provide employment, stimulate local economies, and rectify historical and structural inequities would grind to a halt. With the Occupational Safety and Health Administration forced to limit workplace inspections, workers would be increasingly vulnerable to career-ending injuries or worse. And low-income and underserved communities who suffer the health effects of hazardous waste and industrial pollution, with lax oversight, will lose the protections of the Environmental Protection Agency as inspections halt and cleanup of superfund toxic sites is further delayed.
This dismal vision of the future — and there would be more, since McCarthy has proposed significant spending cuts to get votes from the far right wing — may be exactly what the extremist saboteurs in the House of Representatives want to see. But it’s not what the American people want, and it’s not what any member of the House was elected to pursue.
McCarthy should summon the sense of duty that befits the office he’s so desperate to keep and pull the breaks on this imminent train wreck.
Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002. He writes a twice-monthly column for the Sun-Times.
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