October 5th, 2025
OK, so here we go again.
We’re in the middle of a new season of “shutdown theater”, which is pretty much identical to past episodes. No need for “previously on” here….
In this season, as in every past season, we see politicians on both sides doing their best to convince their partisans that “the other side” is responsible for creating massive hardships because that side won’t agree to whatever their side wants.
And as usual with our politics, neither side is truthful or rational, and both sides are now doing their maximum best to make sure any pain and suffering is focused on the people who can least handle it. And as overblown as possible in their own preferred media.
What’s new?
Some background, for those living under a rock.
The US Government rakes in a tremendous amount of money every year. So far in 2025 the total is $4.69 trillion dollars.
That’s a lot of money. But not “enough.”
The government still needs to borrow to fund the things Congress thinks are important. So important we need to borrow massive amounts of money to pay for them, none of it can possibly be done less expensively or wait longer to happen.
And, again so far in 2025, the government has borrowed $1.97 trillion to do those things.
That means of every dollar the government spends about 30% comes from borrowed money. Imagine you make $100,000/year and every year you add $30,000 to your credit cards, never paying them down one iota.
No one cares, no one takes any responsibility, it’ll all take care of itself “someday”….
That’s why the total debt is now $37.88 trillion.
The Constitution requires that Congress authorize any borrowing, by establishing a “debt ceiling” over which the US cannot borrow without more authorization. Raising the ceiling does not actually spend any money, it simply authorizes the US to borrow to pay for things that have already been bought or committed to.
That was codified in its current form in the Public Debt Acts of 1939 and 1941.
For decades now raising the ceiling has been subject to ever-increasing political theater. Both sides want to convince their side that their overspending is righteous and necessary, while the other side’s overspending is wasteful and un-needed. The only time either side says “hmmm…. maybe we should make some serious cuts to fix our budget” is when they’re not in a position to actually do anything – when they don’t have control of Congress and the White House. Then they can say “we tried but were stopped by THEM…”
Otherwise, overspending is bipartisan. There are minor differences but the only significant one is whose special interests benefit. And that special interest is never “the People”.
In practice, the ceiling is kind of stupid. When we authorize spending we should also address how that is going to be dealt with when we run out of money, but we don’t. And I’m kind of OK with the periodic debt ceiling crises because it raises the deficit spending issue to a level that even the most clueless American hears a bit about.
But the games played by Congress are most definitely “theater”, designed to get the public’s attention in ways that largely to create maximum pain for the People and allow both sides to point fingers at the other as the source of that pain.
We have heard (and will continue to hear) about government employees “not being paid”, social security checks delayed, various parks and services being closed, and even “crucial food assistance for about 6.7 million low-income Americans” is being put in jeopardy.
None of that actually needs to happen. It only happens because Congress designs it to happen that way, to maximize the visibility to Joe and Joanne Voter. Congress needs you to feel the pain so that they will get more leverage and support for whatever they want to spend, no matter how hare-brained and useless.
Let’s think something through here.
Let’s assume your household expenses are $100K/year. Like our government, you don’t have enough money to pay for everything you need so you borrow. Then someone cuts up the credit card. What do you do?
In real life, any rational person would focus it’s spending on essentials – food, electricity, water, gas, etc. And they might delay making the next mortgage or rent payment, because it takes a long time to be foreclosed on or evicted. Hopefully they’ll get their replacement card before then.
They certainly would not scrimp on food for the kids because they just “had” to have box seats to the Padres, right? Any moms out there want to tell us what they’d call dads who did that?
Think about it, and then let’s use the potential “crucial food assistance” in danger as an example.
The first issue is the idea that stopping their next disbursement now somehow leads to an immediate collapse tomorrow. That’s crazy. Almost no one in real life is paid daily, most of us have to figure out how to survive on our last check for a couple weeks or a month.
The second is spending prioritization. This is a $7.6 billion dollar program. Now, if we look at a $4.67 TRILLION dollar budget, anyone who thinks there is not some other lower priority expense that could be delayed to fund $208M a day for a short time is just being deliberately difficult.
That is what the government should do – if they cared about the People. But they don’t.
The F-35 program costs $12 billion annually. I simply cannot imagine that delaying payment of some defense contractors such a tiny amount for a short period of time would have any noticeable impact at all on the program.
…. But delaying a few payments to defense contractors doesn’t make for good theater. The CEO’s that make millions every year might have to delay buying their 10th vacation home for a bit. Not something that gets people marching in the streets mindlessly berating “the other side” for their intransigence.
So we can’t do that. We need to cut food aid instead. Cutting food for low income people has got to be pretty much the nuclear weapon of shutdown theater. I’m surprised they’re not focusing on orphans, but maybe that’s politically incorrect these days.
How about government employees not being paid?
In every past government shutdown even though that has been the threat, but it has never actually happened. Government employees have always been paid retroactively, whether they actually worked during the time or were “furloughed”. With “furloughed” being a euphemism for “paid vacation”.
And in 2019 Congress passed the “Government Employee Fair Treatment Act” making sure that happened. So no government employees are going to be hurting financially. They will be made whole in the end.
Does that make it inconvenient for them? It would if they were paid DAILY, which no one is. If this shutdown is over in days or weeks – as most have been – the worst case scenario would be they get big retroactive checks at some point. I suppose if the shutdown went on for more than one pay period it could get dicey for some, but that almost never happens.
And meanwhile while federal employees are going to be paid for every minute they would normally be paid, they’re not expected to actually work – providing services to you and me – for that pay. Which makes it what private employees would call “a paid vacation”. Serious hardship, I’m sure.
And I can tell you having worked in such environments just coming to a full stop and then having to start up again at some future point that can’t be predicted is most certainly a bad thing. That will have mental impact on the employees, but not financial.
Which means there’s no need to shut down any of the things we’re supposed to be scared of having shut down, like national parks or other services. The only reason those things are shut down is because having you drive up to a national park entrance and having the gate locked is maximum pain for you. The employee normally manning that gate is going to get paid but now gets to go to a baseball game with their grandson. Which is great, really, but not what we had in mind with our tax dollars.
Because government doesn’t work for The People. It works for itself.
Social Security? In 2024 the SS trust fund held $2.7 trillion in reserve with an annual net outflow of $67 billion. We know that SS is heading for insolvency, but in the meantime do you think that they might take a few hundred million out of the trust fund to pay pensions, for a short period, and replace it when the debt ceiling passes?
Not when “cutting off checks to old people” makes for GREAT theater.
In our household budget, a responsible family would pay for groceries, gas for the car, electricity, etc, but they might put off the mortgage payment for a while – since foreclosure takes months and they will be getting paid again by then. That would be the responsible way to do it.
The point? The US Government takes in more than enough revenue to fund the services they provide for actual people, all they have to do is delay some payments to things that do nothing for average people.
Making actual cuts as a result of this – permanent cuts – would be very good but I don’t think anyone is holding their breath on that.
What if, instead of freezing programs that affect real people, we….
Delayed defense contractor payments for new development hardware projects. Do we really think if we put a new aircraft carrier on hold for a couple weeks Russia will invade us?
Delayed payments for oil company and agribusiness subsidies? Do we really think oil pumping and wheat harvesting is going to stop, that none of those businesses can operate a minute for one day without government subsidies?
And what if we delayed non-food and medicine foreign aid? Is some random foreign country getting hundreds of millions in aid from us going to immediately descend into chaos if a payment takes a few extra weeks to arrive?
Nope. None of that will happen – because it’s not good theater. It only affects people you don’t know, most of whom already make astronomical incomes on our government. And if instead they delay paying your neighbor or sending your mother’s social security check then all hell will break loose. The talking heads will castigate Congressmen who have the nerve to question whether we should continue spending like drunken sailors. (Ed. Could even a drunk sailor spend so much? Is that possible?)
The sad-but-predictable thing is neither side is using this as a moment to actually cut spending, to a point where we do not have to borrow money at all. Both sides want to continue running up the credit line, just on different things that benefit THEIR special interests.
Shut the government down. Call the bluff.
I would prefer Congress get real and make sure real people get paid during that shutdown. Put a hold on everything else if they have to. But I don’t expect that to happen, because that would be the kind of thing someone who really understands how this works would do.
And that’s certainly not our government.
Todd Maddison majors in public employee compensation, minors in K12 education issues, and just likes to pay attention to government and do the math.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt
https://fortune.com/longform/lockheed-martin-f-35-fighter-jet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Employee_Fair_Treatment_Act_of_2019