THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050016
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
When a political dispute in Washington first shut down the government, some were amused. Comics made jokes. But the waste, pointlessness and inconvenience involved aren't really funny.
Anti-government zealots may actually believe that no one would notice if all government workers packed up and never came back, that they really are ``inessential.'' But even if that were so, it would make more sense to terminate them than to pay them not to work.
In fact, most government workers perform tasks that have been deemed essential until now. At its core, that's what the budget debate is about.
Perhaps the 383,000 daily visits to national parks are a luxury we could do without. But 600,000 daily Meals on Wheels delivered by volunteers to the elderly are closer to a necessity.
Many of the 23,000-a-day passport applications and 20,000 visas issued aren't to pleasure-seekers but to commercial travelers who are trying to keep the wheels of commerce turning.
The list of inessential operations put on hold includes responding to consumer complaints, compiling economic data, issuing assistance payments for Native Americans and granting small business loans. Private-sector vendors who sell to the government lose business. Retailers frequented by government employees lose sales.
If the shutdown had come as the result of an unavoidable crisis, people would cope stoically. But there was never anything more at stake than partisan grandstanding. From the beginning, the shutdown was totally unnecessary. And another miserable deal for taxpayers.
Workers will eventually be paid for performing no work, and playing catch up will cause them to provide weeks of poor service following weeks of no service at all.
House Republicans have described the shutdown as the only way to get President Clinton to negotiate, but their goal was never compromise but presidential capitulation. Long after negotiations were under way, the shutdown was continued as a form of extortion. See things our way, or else.
Ironically, those crusading against government waste have caused more of it. Those who claim the government behaves stupidly engineered this current stupidity. And those touting an end to politics-as-usual indulged in a purely political piece of street theater with thousands of government employees as unwilling extras.
Worst of all, Republicans who have been right on much of the substance have lost so much credibility on style that they jeopardize their own cause.
This episode has looked like nothing so much as a Three Stooges routine. Moe (the House Republicans) want Larry (the president) to follow their dictates. So Moe slaps around and gouges the eyes of Curly (government workers and the American people who depend on them). And they wonder why people think politicians are the real joke. by CNB