A significant budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress resulted in a partial federal government shutdown. The conflict led to the temporary closure of national parks and museums, with most government offices operating with minimal staffing.
This event highlighted the deep political divisions and budgetary disagreements between the two major political parties.
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The risk and often the reality of government shutdowns have became a regular feature of American politics. This state of affairs began in earnest shortly before the end of the millennium, when Newt Gingrich and his fellow House Republicans shut down the United States government on this day in 1995.
They seemed to be following the theory that there is no smaller government than none at all. Some months after the shutdown ended, the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, who died at age 93 just two weeks ago, argued in a remarkable Nation essay, “Democracy and the Counterrevolution,” that the effort “to stop or reconstitute government in order to extract sweeping policy concessions amounts to an attempted coup d’état.”
Wolin’s brilliant essay reminds us how shutdowns and austerity economics fit within the broader Republican philosophy of governance—or lack thereof—and how that philosophy is antithetical to the ostensibly defining principle of democracy: rule by the people.
This winter’s government shutdown, contrary to media reports, was not about innocent bystanders—government workers, recipients of benefits or tourists—however genuine their hardships. It was about the broad scheme of power in the nation.
Under what was dismissed as posturing, serious political changes were being tested. If we ask, “What kind of authority could justify disrupting and holding an allegedly democratic system hostage in the name of ‘a balanced budget in seven years’ and then attempt to dictate the precise kind and amount of government services that are to be permitted to resume?” the answer is not: “The authority of officials elected to run the government.” Deliberately paralyzing an elected government is far different from the ordinary partisanship that attends appropriations.…