Article from Reason by Eric Boehm.
Government shutdowns are all the rage in Washington right now. We just had one a few weeks ago. Now, the president is already calling for another.
But while the prospect of shutting down the federal government might sound appealing, the reality of a government shutdown is expensive, wasteful, and therefore counterproductive to fiscal responsibility. The continuous threat of a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t enact a budget (or at least a three-week-long continuing resolution) doesn’t seem to be creating incentives for better fiscal stewardship. If anything, it’s doing the opposite. Restarting the government on Jan. 23 after a three-day shutdown required Congress to authorize an additional $31 billion in borrowing.
Rather than continuing to careen from near-shutdown to actual shutdown and back again, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants to force Congress to pass a budget by imposing a penalty that’s sure to give most of Washington nightmares: a 1 percent budget cut.
Under the terms of Paul’s Government Shutdown Prevention Act, which he introduced last month, Congress would agree to ongoing continuing resolutions that would kick-in if a budget was not passed on time. The catch is that the automatic CR would come with an automatic, across-the-board cut of 1 percent for all government agencies. After 90 days, if there is no budget deal, funding would be reduced by another 1 percent.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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Dont anyone hold their breath about Maxine Waters to fire the traitor.
Penalizing Congress for not doing their job… great idea Rand Paul, great idea indeed.
the reality of a government shutdown is expensive, wasteful, and therefore counterproductive to fiscal responsibility
***Therefore there will be more***
Instead of taking the 1% off every agency, take it off each congressman’s pay with the additional also coming off without a budget in 15 days. They are not doing their jobs, so dock their pay. It should also apply to all their perks.
Great idea love it!!!!
I like his notion; but I’d make the cuts 10% and include Congressional salaries in those cuts. That’d insure we get a budget in a timely manner.
Unfortunately for some like Pelosi who ks a multi millionaire (who isn’t these days in Congress?) this amount
is chump change and she’s not going to cry about it. We need stronger penalties, and don’t penalize the military and civil service workers….they’re trying to do their jobs. Maybe they lose 50% of their salary/benefits for the year? That would wake up some and may be the incentive to get some off the fence.
A part of the 1% reduction should be Congressional salaries.
I believe like was said here take 10% of there pay and for every 2 weeks it goes on take another 10% see how long they play there games then
Hell, take all the congress pay we pay their salary, I don’t want to pay them a d penny. That’s how I feel about there childless actions.
These are all great ideas to make them responsible and do the jobs they were hired to do.! NOW HOW DO WE GET IT DONE?? Is there some measure we taxpayers can effect? I’ll be first in line if there is.
You are so right Luther.