Today (September 26), Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) published an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Media Groups newspapers (Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Daily Breeze), in which he claimed that all hell would break loose should the federal government shut down without a continuing resolution to fund the government.
His second paragraph gives away right away how clueless, or rather delusional he is about how government works, how financing is funded then funneled through government, and ultimately how the federal government pays the bills.
The last government shut-down serves as a cautionary tale, illustrating which services would be adversely affected.
Sherman then pivots:
According to the Congressional Research Service [Who are they?], a number of services could come to a halt.
Sherman writes "could come to a halt." He does not assert that all of these essential functions will stop, because in effect, they will not.
What actually happened in 1995-1996?
For the record, Brad Sherman was first elected to office in 1996, and therefore he never experienced directly from a legislator's perspective the first two government shut-downs. Yes, there were two, not one, and life did not come to a screeching halt.
Aside from a local park in Washington D.C closing down, plus furlough days which were all paid back, life went merrily along. Veterans received their payments, as did Social Security and Medicare recipients. The essential functions of government did not come to a halt.
Why? Because the ongoing revenues from the several states were still pouring in from all over the country. The ancillary functions, non-essential elements, did stop, but no one was harmed.
How did the public react at the time? They did not get all that mad. True, the Republicans did take more of the blame, but that does not mean that they were at fault. The margin of blame is much more moderate today. The strong economy which resulted from the forced serious budget efforts helped Bill Clinton win reelection (plus the fact that the Republican opponent Bob Dole was hardly inspiring) also helped the Republican Party gain seats in the US Senate.
Still, Sherman hammers home the word "delay" as the big bugaboo that will make Republicans look really bad should a shut-down take place. The Democratic hysterics over the sequester (including Congresswoman Maxine Water's assertion that the forced cuts would cost this country 170 million jobs) have proven unsound and unfounded. The economy has even improved (by not much).
Applications will be "delayed", Sherman haunts over the readers of the Daily News. He also uses the term "may" at length, because Sherman cannot be sure that all of these terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things will happen.
He was not serving in Congress then, and because of his histrionics in the press now, he is still not serving his constituents.
Sherman then closes his editorial with:
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and the threat of a government shutdown [sic, not "shut-down" as he had written at the beginning] will pass.
Sherman hopes that cooler heads will prevail. This coming from the guy who grabbed Congressman Howard Berman in front of a roaring crowd of college students, shouting "You wanna get into this?!"
Then Sherman ends with:
But I would be remiss if I did not urge you to plan for the possibility that we will repeat the experience of 1995.
How vague is his caution, indeed. The 1995 experience was a whimper in the wind for the government, a short-term media loss for the Republicans, but a long-term gain for the economy, the Republicans that year, and for the country.
Cooler heads are prevailing in Washington, the fiscal conservatives and limited government advocates who refuse to keep spending away our nation's future, and who refuse to fund for one more day the disastrous train wreck called Obamacare.