The Government is Closed, But America is Still Open

 

IBDEditorials.com

Shutdown: The government is shut and the sky hasn't fallen, just as the sequester didn't invite Armageddon. It's time to realize just how much of government can be permanently furloughed.

'In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," Ronald Reagan said after taking the oath of office.

He pointed out that "we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present."

Sound familiar? And that was in 1981, when the deficit was under $80 billion, not $1 trillion as today; and the national debt was less than $1 trillion, not $17 trillion.

Government — more of it than ever — remains the problem today, more than it ever has.

But it won't be long before millions of Americans may want to put on the 2013 equivalent of an "I survived Y2K" T-shirt. The light bulb might go off when they take a stroll on the National Mall in Washington that the government insists is closed, and discover going for a walk can be done without state supervision.

Or, like a group of World War II vets did Tuesday, they might jump over barriers to visit a "closed" war memorial, and find that they didn't need government help to honor our military heroes.

President Obama's National Intelligence office proved itself as politicized as anything else in this administration this week, claiming the shutdown will lessen "the intelligence community's ability to identify threats."

But the president is the manager. Couldn't he order Secretary of State John Kerry to cancel his upcoming visit to Bali, then reallocate the money saved to counter-terrorism activities? That certainly would make up some of the difference.

Come to think of it, how about the president telling all the members of his Cabinet to stay put and shut up until the government reopens? That would save a fortune. And the reduction in hot air emissions would help extend the 15-year lull in man-made climate change.

We hear of how most federal agencies are being forced to prioritize because of the shutdown. But shouldn't they be doing that when the government is open too?

As Reason's J.D. Tucille writes, during a shutdown "the military stays at its posts, the Post Office keeps losing your mail, Social Security and Medicare continue hemorrhaging money." What's more, the real non-governmental world of the equity markets actually gained a goodly amount on day one of closed-down government.

Government is indeed the problem, as Reagan knew.

In the coming days and weeks we will discover we can do without a whole lot of it — a fact worth emphasizing in an era when nothing is certain except debt and taxes.