{"id":10314,"date":"2013-10-18T17:04:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-19T00:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=10314"},"modified":"2013-10-18T17:04:10","modified_gmt":"2013-10-19T00:04:10","slug":"what-fiscal-conservatism-the-cost-of-the-republican-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=10314","title":{"rendered":"What ‘Fiscal Conservatism’? The Cost of the Republican Shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the 81 – 18 vote in the U.S. Senate<\/a> and 285 – 144 tally in the U.S. House<\/a>, Congress averted a worldwide economic disaster this week by finally voting to end the 16-day, ‘Tea-Party’ manufactured shutdown and debt ceiling crises.<\/p>\n

As CNN noted<\/a>, shortly after President Barack Obama signed the measure into law, Congress has furnished only a “temporary bandage,” which leaves the draconian “sequester” cuts in place, authorizes government spending at current levels through Jan. 15, 2014 and postpones the same threat of a default on the nation’s financial obligations until Feb. 7, 2014.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, radical ‘Tea Party’ Republicans, like Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, insisted<\/a> “this was worth having the fight,” even as they were conceding absolute defeat.<\/p>\n

Worth it? Well, not to actual<\/em> fiscal conservatives, according to the numbers…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The economic consulting firm, IHS Global Insight says the 16-day shutdown cost the U.S. government alone some $4.8 billion. Those numbers, “about $1.6 billion a week, $300 million a day, or $12.5 million an hour…cover just the cost in work and services the government is unable to perform,” as federal workers were furloughed, NBC reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Standard & Poor’s, according to The Hill<\/a>, pegs the real cost of the Republican shutdown to the full U.S. economy to be “at least $24 billion”, as it shaved some .6% of economic growth off the nation’s GDP.<\/p>\n[Despite the “default denialists” heard over the last week in the ‘Tea Party’, it would have been much<\/i> worse than even that, had a deal not been struck at the last minute. John Chambers, the global head of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, said this week, according to a Newsweek exclusive<\/a>, that the agency was just minutes away from changing the U.S. credit rating from it’s already lowered AA+ to “selective default”, “the lowest of S&P’s 20 grades of untrustworthiness.” The only other country to have that distinction? Grenada.]\n

The bi-partisan bill ultimately passed to re-open the government and avoid federal default also mandates<\/a> back pay to furloughed government employees, much of it for public services never provided to the American people. To top it off, The Hill also reports<\/a> that, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the bill ultimately agreed to by Republicans will “increase total authorized spending by $1.2 billion.”<\/p>\n

But that’s not all. Today, the Los Angeles Times<\/i> details<\/a> how the “economic hit” from the shutdown “could endure<\/a>.” The paper asserts “the extent of the economic harm goes well beyond what can be immediately tallied: lost business deals and disrupted research; a hit to consumer confidence; and what many see as permanent damage to U.S. credibility around the world.” The disturbing examples provided by the Times<\/i> include the possible inability of the National Science Foundation to salvage important data from a halted, below-ice environmental study in Antarctica.<\/p>\n

Oh, well, from the standpoint of climate science denialists, halting anything that might lead to further confirmation of global climate change would be considered “worth it,” no?<\/p>\n

To a Republican Party which pretends to be concerned about fiscal conservatism — even as these numbers and many others<\/a> show they clearly are not — any “victory” found amidst this shutstorm will have to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the 81 – 18 vote in the U.S. Senate and 285 – 144 tally in the U.S. House, Congress averted a worldwide economic disaster this week by finally voting to end the 16-day, ‘Tea-Party’ manufactured shutdown and debt ceiling crises. As CNN noted, shortly after President Barack Obama signed the measure into law, Congress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[505,192,390,300,658,198,233],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea-party","category-accountability","category-economy","category-republicans","category-ted-cruz","category-us-house","category-us-senate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10314"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=10314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}