A shutdown must be avoided

In a familiar but always worrisome drama, the federal government faces a partial shutdown next week.

There is no good reason for shutdowns. They do nothing for the people or their government. A failure by Congress and the White House to agree quickly on a plan to temporarily keep that government going would be a lose-lose.

Unfortunately, such stopgap measures have become a chronic habit in the appropriations process. They are better than nothing in the short term, but no way to do business in the long term. As the dynamics now stand, the minority party can threaten to hold up an emergency extension in exchange for concessions as this Oct. 1 deadline nears.   

This time the Democrats are the “out” party pushing for leverage. They want to force an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits and to reverse Medicaid cuts that were an unpopular provision of President Donald Trump’s big multiyear budget bill.

Trump on Tuesday escalated tensions by canceling a negotiation with Democratic leaders. He called their conditions “unserious and ridiculous” and sought to dismiss and delegitimize them on social media as “Minority Radical Left Democrats.”

In the power game the president might see himself as having a good hand to play. Should Democrats force a shutdown, it would give the White House a new excuse to ditch more programs legally appropriated by Congress. With that rationale, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in March reluctantly but wisely agreed not to torpedo a GOP extension bill — even though it included controversial funding changes.

Nothing has visibly changed in the last few months that would make a shutdown a good idea rather than a bad one, even if Democrats — who are at least as frustrated these days by their isolation as the Republicans once were — may see a shutdown as an attractive mirage.

Republicans in Congress could help resolve the latest standoff by stepping out of Trump’s shadow just a bit and asserting their constitutional powers over spending in search of a compromise that stems chaos.

In a shutdown, agency operations are disrupted. Nonessential functions are suspended. U.S. employees and contractors go unpaid. Damage and impact worsen the longer the shutdown lasts, and it costs the economy.

There have been 14 such shutdowns since 1981. The last was the longest; it began Christmas week in 2018 and dragged on for 35 days. The president was Trump, who refused to sign an appropriations bill without $5.7 billion for his "border wall." He failed to get it. 

Shutdowns are useless regardless of the players. Our political leaders should have seen enough by now to figure that out — and how to avoid them.