Americans’ Wellbeing Cannot Become a Partisan Issue

by Violeta Gonzalez, Contributor

The ongoing (as of writing) government shutdown reached its 36th day on Nov. 5—officially becoming the longest in United States history—and there seems to be no end in sight. Until then the record was held by the second most recent: beginning in Dec. 2018, it was the costliest in history, fetching $3 billion in gross domestic product. It was, notably, also under Trump’s presidency. 

The total number of “government shutdowns” that have occurred in American history depends on your criteria, but generally, there’s been 13 federal funding gaps since 1980, when Jimmy Carter’s Office of Legal Counsel established a stricter interpretation of the Antideficiency Act. It said, in short, that nonessential government agencies cannot spend any money after the fiscal year ends if the federal government has yet to decide on their budget. 

Three of these have occurred under Trump, who’s beaten in number only by Reagan. Despite this, I hesitate to reduce it to an issue of administration. 

For years, America’s administration has been becoming more and more politically polarized—but its people can’t afford to have a government that isn’t able to work together. Quite literally: academic research has concluded that polarization is directly related to greater federal debt. Insook Lee’s empirical assessment in “Does Political Polarization Lead to a Rise in Government Debt?” asserts that polarization affects timeliness in budget decisionmaking—as we are seeing now. Furthermore, as Luis Girola points out in “Does Political Polarization Affect Economic Expectations?”, parties often disagree for the sake of disagreeing. 

The United States’s debt has skyrocketed by $32 trillion since 2000, and our politicians have descended into finger-pointing. The White House’s official website currently sports a shutdown timer emblazoned with “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government.” The Democrats, GOP, and White House alike have been posting memes on Twitter while the shutdown has actively been taking place. This political division has rapidly devolved from unproductive to infantile.

And, naturally, polarization within the government leads to polarization within the state as  a whole. We have lost the ability to see others with differing political alignments as what they are: citizens being let down by their representatives in the very same ways that we are. The left and right have become aliens to each other, all while being oppressed by the same forces.

The two-party system has never gone uncontested. John Adams himself thought of it as “the greatest political evil.” It’s unrepresentative; as E. E. Schattschneider succinctly put it in his 1942 book Party Government, “there are 1,000 interests and only two parties.” And the longer it has persisted, the more calamitous it has become. 

It would be preferable, of course, for a compromise to be reached in the current shutdown. Particularly with the Affordable Care Act at stake, the GOP’s proposed fiscal proposal passing unamended will certainly have serious consequences for lower-income citizens. But the question of whether it is worthwhile for Democrats to continue pushing for their plan must be asked when, for instance, upwards of 40 million people are suffering at this very moment as a result of reduced SNAP benefits.

Accessible healthcare or accessible food? We’ve reached the point where the assurance of the populace’s wellbeing is being used as a Congressional bargaining chip.

I was left feeling conflicted after Election Day this year. Happy as I was after a nationwide blue shift that led to wins such as Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory in New York, it was difficult to celebrate knowing that the federal government’s shutters remained drawn. 

The following morning, I spent some of my time walking up and down College Street with my friend while basking in the dawn of America’s officially-longest-ever government shutdown and asking people if they, or anybody that they knew, had been affected by the shutdown. 

We spoke with some 20 people. The answer, overwhelmingly, was “yes”; they cited layoffs, furloughs, unpaid work, difficulty putting food on the table, delayed flights, canceled buses, problems reentering the country. It was upsetting, as people told us of their—or their family’s, or their friends’, or their friends’ friends’—circumstances, to see just how far the shutdown’s impact reaches. Reading numbers online for a month doesn’t compare to seeing it laid out in front of you. 

I’m not a political theorist. I can’t accurately predict the direction that this country is headed, or improvise productive solutions to what has become a generational budget crisis. But it seems to be clear that we all stand to suffer the worsening consequences of the United States’s political system if no sort of change comes about. Whether it’s the implementation of ranked-choice voting, a shift from first-past-the-post to proportional representation, the abolition of the Electoral College, or any other potential impacts, some sort of change needs to come about—and quickly.

The United States government has always been contingent on the support of its people; in 1776—250 years ago exactly this coming July—its founders tired of mistreatment and ascertained their rights, taking matters into their own hands. 

If that’s taken away, it has nothing left. And, nowadays, ideas spread faster. Communication is simpler and more efficient. Opinions are easier to state. Citizens have better protections—we just need to learn how to work together.

But I’m confident that we’ll find a way. In the end, we’ll have to. Who else will?