Government Shutdown? America Will Be Just Fine

For all the hysteria pouring out of the Washington Compost and New York Slimes , one might think the gates of Hades will swing open at the stroke of midnight. Headlines scream of a “crisis,” wailing that government functions will grind to a halt, life will cease to exist, and chaos will reign. It's all so dramatic—almost Shakespearean—except far less original.

As the US hurtles toward yet another government shutdown, this time over the Democrats' refusal to pass a clean Continuing Resolution (CR), it's worth asking: what's the real catastrophe here? A few days without non-essential bureaucrats? Or continuing to shovel trillions of borrowed dollars into a bloated federal behemoth, laden with pork projects and graft? I'll take the temporary shutdown.

This shutdown isn't a crisis. It's a mirror held up to a government that refuses to exercise fiscal discipline. For decades, Congress has avoided tough choices by larding up omnibus bills with trillions of wasteful spending, dumped on us like Caesar's decrees. Yet when conservatives demand just a sliver of responsibility—like, say, funding the border wall or cutting back bureaucratic flab—the Beltway elites clutch their pearls.