Shut It Down!

Reflections from the inside: day 4 of the shutdown. 

By Danielle Verney O'Gorman

Government exists to protect people who can’t protect themselves, to provide a mechanism for collective action so that no one slips through the cracks and is forced to fend for themselves in a hostile world. 

This is what I tell my freshmen students in my Intro to American Government class on the first day and that thesis statement provides a framework for the rest of the policy discussions that we have throughout the semester.  This is how I frame the Affordable Care Act, SNAP and WIC and other social welfare programs, foreign aid, and anything else we discuss. 

I think that if we accept this basic premise, it’s possible to have a discussion about the pros and cons of policies to achieve that end.  I truly believe (perhaps this makes me naïve) that it’s possible for reasonable and intelligent people who are deeply invested in the public good to disagree on the means for achieving it.  I’ve met kind and compassionate people across the political spectrum.

What I haven’t come across before are people who are so invested in their own self-interest that they are willing to let the country burn, to let our most vulnerable citizens as well as their own employees go hungry.  Shutting down the government was a shock to my system because I truly believed the Tea Party would blink.  Polls were telling them to stop.  Democrats were telling them to stop.  Moderates in their own party were practically begging them to stop—including John Boehner, who has now apparently lost any remnant of a moral compass and has joined them in their “small government” crusade without even truly believing in it. 

I went to work in shock, and was surrounded by my shocked and saddened civilian colleagues.  Some of them had been working during the last shutdown, 17 years ago.  They remembered feeling much the same way, as though they were the victims of the very government they worked for.  Now, though, they were fairly united in pointing the finger at the GOP for responsibility in a way that perhaps they were not under the last shutdown. 

I have given much of my life, much of what is good in me, to my country and my job.  My debate team is the second child that I did not and could not have.  I believe that what I do as an educator makes my students better officers, better front-line ambassadors to other countries, better stewards of the enlisted people entrusted to them as junior officers, better advocates for compassionate policy changes both inside and outside the military.  For that reason I have sacrificed countless weekends, countless nights, countless hours I could have spent with my family and I have done it smiling.  Now I feel lost and small and sad, as the government I work for turns its back on me, calls me “non-essential”, refuses to pay me; my employer pays lip service to my importance while not only not canceling the football game scheduled for this weekend, but going ahead with the pep rally they’re paying for beforehand.  Think about that—the civilian professors of the service academies are LESS ESSENTIAL than not just a football game, but a pep rally for a football game.  It breaks my heart. 

Even more heartbreaking is the impact this has on those who rely on the government.  Does the loss of a paycheck or two hurt me?  Yes, but my family will survive it.  We won’t lose our house or our food security or our cars over it, and even if we were at risk of doing so, our families would step in to shield us from the impact.  There are many employees, both at my own workplace and throughout the federal government, who are not so lucky.  Not all of us are “overpaid” desk jockeys with doctoral degrees—many are the workers who clean up after us or who prepare food for our students.  They are suffering in a way I’m not. 

Or how about the families that rely on SNAP or WIC to get through the month?  This is not just in support of the unemployed, though God knows they need it in this economic climate.  It also goes to support the working poor who still can’t quite make ends meet, including many military families.  The idea that a few selfish members of Congress are quite literally taking food from the mouths of children makes me ill.  Of course, their answer is that the hungry should rely on private donations—which is what the wealthy and selfish always say. Never mind the fact that this year donations to food banks are down 68%, or that many food banks are still experiencing depletion from the summer due to a decrease in school and university-based drives and the fact that they feed children over the summer who rely on school nutrition programs during the school year (school nutrition programs that the GOP would also like to see cut).  Many who are impacted by this absurd hostage-situation-cum-temper-tantrum will find they have nowhere to go to feed their children. 

Women and children are suffering because of this decision, the decision to “shut down”.  The language is reminiscent of Todd Akin's 2012 comment that “legitimate” rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant because women’s bodies have a way to “shut that whole thing down”.  What is it with the GOP and shutting things down? This terminology that they use as a weapon to hurt women, children, and families?  I hope the American people remember this, remember how they felt during this wild-eyed Tea Party crusade into madness, when it comes time to vote.  Maybe it’s time for America shut that whole thing down!

Danielle Verney O'Gorman is the Director of Debate at the United States Naval Academy