COMMENTARY: Shut down the shutdown hysteria

It’s almost as it the news media are trying to get us to hide under our beds in fear.

From CNN to USA Today to Fox and beyond, all we hear is, “There’s a shutdown! There’s a shutdown!” Of course there’s a bloody federal government shutdown. It’s the end of September, isn’t it? It’s federal budget-passing time, isn’t it?

For most Americans, shutting down the federal government means nothing.

First off, it’s an empty threat that rarely ever happens — the last time was six years ago. (America survived, by the way.) Yet almost every year at this time we hear the same scary and sad media stories about the threat of federal parks closing and federal employees — aka, bureaucrats — being furloughed and not getting their paychecks until the deadlock is over.

But shutting down the government for a few days or even weeks doesn’t seriously affect the lives or the livelihoods of most Americans. If it weren’t for the big TV networks and print dinosaurs such as The Washington Post acting like it was the end of the world, most Americans wouldn’t even know that the federal government has been closed for the past week or so.

It’s the usual story — the usual dumb “government shutdown” story that I’ve written 10 times before. The characters are just a different collection of spineless and incompetent Republicans and Democrats in Congress who can’t or won’t make the right decision.

This year the funding fight is over the extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies, but it’s always something partisan and stupid. Democrats OK’d a similar bill nine months ago, but they won’t OK this one largely because they hate President Donald Trump so much they can’t see straight.

So now the Schumers and the Thunes and Johnsons and Jeffries are pointing partisan fingers of blame at each other. They’re trying to force the other side to capitulate and sign a gigantic one-piece omnibus legislation that contains all the legislative crap, boondoggles and self-serving bills both parties couldn’t get passed on their own during the year.

Meanwhile, the propagandists at CNN are already writing hysterical things such as “The ramifications of Capitol Hill’s deadlock are steadily rippling across a broad swath of American lives.”

As examples of these supposedly dire threats to American lives, CNN pointed out that New York can’t afford to keep the Statue of Liberty open and the D.C. court system won’t be able to issue marriage certificates.

CNN and everyone else in the shutdown spook show know how this one will end. Everyone in the federal workforce will get their back pay. And America will survive, despite the predictable failures of Congress.

If we really want to stop these seasonal shutdowns, I’ve got an idea that might help. How about a piece of legislation that says when a government shutdown occurs, the first nonessential federal “workers” to lose their pay are members of Congress?

It’s hard to be optimistic, given Congress’ sorry track record, but I’m looking for a member of the Senate or House who has enough courage to write it — and a party that has enough courage to pass it.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Follow @reaganworld on X.