I started writing this article about three weeks ago, when the government initially shut down. Then I put it away. There were a lot of of articles already written, and it is by definition a politically charged topic. However, it does have a direct impact on our finances, and it has not gone away.
I’ve been writing about government shutdowns for a while now. My wife, a military pharmacist, is an essential worker. That means she keeps working. In the past, I was very concerned about whether she would get paid during the shutdowns. That was the first time I experienced this in 2011. In 2013 I celebrated having a great emergency fund, but luckily we didn’t have to tap into it. The last one in 2018 had my wife practically running the office, which meant losing her work from home job (5 hour commute each day) while not getting paid. Our kids were four and six at the time, so that would have been stressful. It turned out that she didn’t have to go to the office every day and get paid.
All potential problems were avoided. That’s another reason why I shelved this article. Writing about this topic feels like a combination of Chicken Little and crying wolf. Plus, the kids are older now and our finances are in a much, much better position than they were during the last shutdown.
This government shutdown is different
This is where I have to get political, because this is the strangest of all shutdowns. In many ways, neither side’s goals seem to make any sense. I’ll explain why in a moment, but first I’ll explain each party’s position (in case you’ve been lost in a jungle for the past month):
- Republicans simply want to fund the government in the short term. They are not looking for political ‘wins’.
- Democrats are trying to extend the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare (ACA) pandemic credits.
In almost every situation, Republicans win an easy political victory. Americans overwhelmingly want the government to stay open, and Republicans want that too.
This may be the only exception. The Democrats have identified a problem for many Americans. If the ACA credits are NOT extended, the ACA premiums will more than double on average. So if a family paid $800 a month, their bill would increase on average by around $1,700. That would be a nightmare for many families who qualify for the credits.
The issue of tax credits is so pressing that the elected Republican chairman of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has been warning politicians all year about the problem in Washington. This Republican (and other Republicans in the group) sides with the Democrats. If the Democrats don’t get their way and the credits aren’t delivered, many Americans will be right to blame Republicans for the incredible inflation.
The Republicans want to balance the budget and have never been a fan of Obamacare/ACA. I suspect they will just blame the increases on a systemic problem with the ACA that the Democrats created. That might work, but two-thirds of Americans support the ACA, and as they learned at last year’s presidential debate, Trump has spent a decade and only has “concepts of a plan” when it comes to anything else.
In many ways, Democrats are actually doing Republicans a favor by avoiding public backlash if the appropriations expire. Politically, if they have their way, they should be able to campaign to save the day for these families who rely on the ACA. For full disclosure, I’m in the Democratic camp. In this K-shaped economyDrastically increasing spending on those most affected should be something we are all against.
What baffles me is that Republicans have attacked Democrats by falsely saying they want to provide health care to illegal/undocumented immigrants. The ACA is overwhelmingly for the American people – illegal aliens can’t even get coverage. Every social media platform must immediately correct misinformation. It is possible that some illegal aliens are circumventing the system, but these are exceptions. Let’s imagine that Elon Musk decided to give away all his money to American citizens. I can’t imagine anyone would object to the whole plan if it were possible that a few illegal immigrants would somehow accidentally get a dollar or two.
At the start of the shutdown, Republicans claimed they could revisit the issue in December. The problem with that is that open enrollment is November 1 and everyone needs to know what the premiums will be. There’s no point in putting it off until the last minute – unless the whole plan is to not do it at all. If Republicans’ only problem with Democrats’ health care request is a month or two of timing, why not start negotiations? Why let three weeks go by with the government shut down and not even talk about it? It’s not like a politician has anything more important to do.
Many things have happened that are not clear to me about this closure. Republicans started firing government employees. Firing employees feels like watching my children get into a fight and then one of them says to the other, “If you don’t do what I say, I’ll put out my eye.” The natural response is, “Uh, okay, go ahead. It’s your eye. You’ll have to live with the consequences of having one eye.”
If you’re trying to rule a country, you need employees. I guess if your goal is just to break things and create chaos for the American people, layoffs might make sense. I don’t know how it’s a political “win” for Republicans to say, “It’s been three months since we passed the bill that cut health care to give tax cuts to billionaires. Now let’s keep the government closed and lay people off because we don’t want to talk about giving Americans access to more affordable health care.” I guess that’s what makes me a Democrat.
The lazy male household
Phew, with all this political stuff, now you know why I originally shelved the article. For us, this closure is different from the others. As with the previous one, there was initial uncertainty about whether my wife would have to work without pay. Unlike the other times, it was resolved after a few days or a week would be paid as normally scheduled. She has never missed a single paycheck. This time they came back to explicitly tell her that she won’t get paid.
Less than an hour after that message appeared, an entire group of hundreds of pharmacists had to attend a presentation about a new policy. The policy extends the period during which they can be deployed from a maximum of one month to four months. (When my wife signed up, the maximum was two weeks.) Also, in the past, it has required some kind of crisis or emergency, such as a hurricane or an outbreak like Ebola a decade ago. Now they don’t need an emergency – it could simply be, “we could use more people in this part of the country” because we were short-staffed.
One of the things about being a pharmacist is that you don’t have to choose to join the military. There are plenty of jobs just about everywhere, many of which pay more. (Though I admit that the military benefits and old age pension are top notch.) One of the reasons they came up with this policy of moving people for four months at a time is that they can’t recruit people efficiently. People no longer choose it as they did in the past.
I would like to explain to them that the new policy creates a much bigger recruitment problem and adds a retention problem. However, it’s hard to say that retention is a “problem” because the government is firing people. It’s a wonder pharmacists still exist. Their boss is actively campaigning against decades of proven public health policies in nearly 200 countries around the world to promote debunked vaccine conspiracy theories.
Oops, I almost ended up in politics, but then I realized that vaccines fall firmly into the science category. I better end this article before I get any closer to making political comments.
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