Senate Deal Threatens Shutdown Tradition

Senate leaders endangered one of America’s most dependable election-season rituals by reaching a bipartisan agreement to keep the federal government operating while lawmakers campaign. The proposal would fund agencies at current levels through Dec. 11, nearly two months after the Sept. 30 deadline, denying voters the familiar autumn pageant of unpaid employees, airport delays and senators denouncing one another beside countdown clocks installed for governance. Senate Majority Leader John Thune described avoiding another shutdown as a priority, recklessly implying that Congress should complete its basic constitutional work before panic becomes the only available procedure.

Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray also secured language delaying a Trump administration rule that would give senior political appointees greater authority to evaluate federal grants according to presidential priorities. The delay threatens to preserve an obsolete system in which applicants are judged by written criteria rather than whether their proposal gives the president a warm feeling. President Donald Trump condemned the outbreak of administrative continuity. “A shutdown is one of our greatest democratic traditions because it reminds federal workers who is boss and gives television tremendous ratings,” Trump said. “People love checking whether their paycheck still exists. They come up to me and say, ‘Sir, please make Christmas financially terrifying again.’”

By extending funding beyond the November midterms, senators could campaign without first threatening the livelihoods of air traffic controllers, food inspectors, park employees and millions of other Americans traditionally used as seasonal political decorations. The arrangement also deprives candidates of the chance to pose outside locked federal buildings and demand that opponents reopen agencies they personally voted to close. Analysts warned that prolonged stability could cause citizens to expect functioning airports, processed benefits and a government capable of surviving an election without taking its own workforce hostage. Such expectations would erase decades of congressional progress toward replacing budgeting with televised brinkmanship. Government shutdowns are therefore not policy failures but the nation’s most successful public demonstration that Congress has arrived at work.

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