A profligate shutdown

As October comes to a close, the shutdown of the federal government that started at the beginning of the month stretches on, with no obvious end in sight. The houses of Congress are at an impasse, with the representatives having sent to the Senate a continuing resolution that would end the shutdown. The Senate, in turn, has voted down approval of that measure a number of times, as the filibuster requires 60 votes for passage.

The continuing resolution would only fund full government operations until Nov. 21, a deadline that was set earlier and would provide less than a month. This means that no matter what happens in the Senate, a longer-term deal will be needed to avoid continued shutdown.

Calling this a shutdown really is not quite accurate, however. Before this funding conflict, the federal government was spending about $20 billion per day. During the supposed shutdown, the government is spending about $18 billion per day. What accounts for that $2 billion per day difference? Federal agencies have suspended many “non-essential” operations, while payments to contractors and others have been delayed. Other government services, including national parks, museums, and others are operating at reduced capacity or are closed. Overall roughly 900,000 federal employees are on furlough while another 700,000 are still working but not receiving pay.

But what seems like a reduction of federal spending by 10 percent per day is actually far less than that. Furloughed workers will eventually receive back pay. Grants and contracts will also eventually be paid out. So what the government is doing during the shutdown is really accruing greater levels of obligation that will eventually be repaid. Not much is actually being saved during the government shutdown. And of course the government continues to do all kinds of things and spend all kinds of money, from providing entitlements like Social Security and Medicare to servicing the national debt.

What’s described as a government shutdown is really a partial pause of some aspects of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Most of the government continues to burn through money at the same rate as it did before the funding dispute. All of this goes to show how divorced from reality our political discourse and leadership actually is. The government shutdown is unsustainable. But that’s because we cannot afford to continue to operate indefinitely even at these marginally reduced levels of outlays. Even more unsustainable is the level of money the federal government spends when it is at full capacity.

All of this coverage and consternation over a nominal “shutdown” is a distraction from the much larger, more structural, and more concerning imbalances in our federal government’s fiscal policy. We need entitlement reform now. That we so regularly get into funding fights over what amount to crumbs from the master’s table just demonstrates the immaturity and imprudence of our political leadership.

Much like the attention spent on DOGE, the shutdown is in fact an abdication of political responsibility by our ruling class. If we look at the books for the end of the last fiscal year, concluded just before the current shutdown, we find some truly troubling trends: “For the fiscal year that ended on September 30, the federal government spent a little more than $7 trillion, a $301 billion increase from FY 2024.”

As John Calvin once put it, “They who rule unjustly and incompetently have been raised up by God to punish the wickedness of the people.” In the case of our democratic republic, we are reaping the bitter fruits of trees that we ourselves have planted and nourished. We cannot simply denounce the failures of our elites and the ruling class. We must recognize that we the people are ultimately the ruling class in these United States, and that our failings, whether moral, spiritual, economic, or political, are finally to be counted to ourselves.

This means that we need to acknowledge our errors and repent. A national day of repentance might make for a good beginning. But repentance requires turning from our ways. Repentance demands not merely words but actions. So the first order of our collective business at this moment is to resolve this government shutdown. But we must do so in a way that makes our future sustainable and improves the prospects for flourishing, not only for ourselves but for our posterity.