Today, Explained - Shutdown

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

It’s Day 12 of the government shutdown. Vox’s Li Zhou explains what that means for the country and Matthew Yglesias argues that the core issue of the wall is fundamentally dumb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was biking past the Washington Monument yesterday and noticed that the trash cans all around it were overflowing. There was trash blowing all over the National Mall. And it was just a subtle little reminder that it's a whole new year, but the government is still stuck in late 2018. Leigh Zhou has been covering the shutdown for Vox. It's day 12 of the shutdown today, and about 25% of the government has currently been affected by it because the other 75% was funded earlier last year. And that means that departments including Homeland Security, Treasury, State, Interior have yet to be funded. And one of the biggest impacts of this is that about 800,000 federal employees are currently affected and working without pay or are furloughed. So about

380,000 are furloughed, which means they've been told to just stay home, not come to work. And then the other 420,000 are working, but they're not getting immediate pay. And so which agencies are the most affected by that? I think some of the most visible ones that people might observe are places like the national parks, where they've stayed open over the holidays, but they've had limited staffing, limited access to services. And so there's trash piling up at different parks. Conservationists are worried that natural resources are getting hurt by kind of the lack of park rangers around to make sure things are going smoothly. Another place people might see it is the IRS, which I think most directly affects people's taxes. And filing season is about to start. And it's the first filing season where they're going to be implementing the new Republican tax plan.

So they were already worried about delays. And I think now, because so many people at that agency are furloughed, you could see that delayed even further. But other places, including like FDA, EPA, the judiciary, all expected to see some sort of impact due to limited staffing. And this whole thing, of course, is happening because of President Trump's desire to see more security at the border, a wall, slats, whatever it might be. Is stuff like border security, border patrol, are they still being fully funded? So Homeland Security is probably the most contentious department that has yet to be funded, but about 88% of DHS is still working and they're doing it without pay.

So you're looking at people like border patrol as well as the U.S. Coast Guard still working. And I think that is kind of a ironic political twist in all of this, in that as Trump demands more border security, you're seeing people who are in charge of helping provide that working without pay over the holidays. A majority of the country's border security is working currently for free. Yes. Yeah. With the hopes that once this whole thing's resolved, they'll get back pay, I guess. Yeah, right. Congress in the past has usually approved back pay for both workers who are furloughed as well as workers who are kind of on the job but not getting their paychecks immediately. How about like Congress senators? They're still getting paid? Yep. They're still getting paid. Their pay actually comes from, it's directly written into the Constitution. So it's not affected by this annual appropriations process. Nice.

Yep. So I guess like who are the federal employees that aren't getting paid? It just depends on where you are and in which department and at what level or something like that? Yeah, it's folks working at all of these agencies. And I think the people that you see getting probably most directly affected by this are people who are federal contractors. And that includes everyone from security guards to cafeteria workers to consultants, because they are unlikely to get back pay after all of this is over. So if you're employed directly by the federal government, you're going to get pay because kind of the government has processes in place for that.

But contractors work for a third-party company. So if those companies aren't getting paid for their services during this time, those contractors just kind of have a huge hole in their paychecks that's never going to get made up. I guess an interesting thing about the government being shut down is that you could very well go about your life without really noticing it. Right. If you're not at a national park or not at the border. How is this affecting President Trump's approval ratings? Are people noticing this and frustrated about this or is it sort of business as usual?

His approval ratings have plummeted in response to the shutdown. Oh, they have? ratings have plummeted in response to the shutdown. Yeah, a recent poll has them under 40%, which is about the same as they were during the Charlottesville rally when he refused to denounce white supremacists. So they're very low. And he's definitely getting blamed for the shutdown. And that makes sense, given the fact that he said he's willing to own the shutdown and that he's proud to own the shutdown. But has since been blaming Democrats. Right.

And I think when you look at that poll, the data kind of reflects that in that about I think it's over 80 percent of Republicans actually support what he's doing and think he shouldn't compromise and he should keep on fighting for the wall as he's promised to do this whole time. Democrats, of course, take control of the House on Thursday. Tomorrow, do they have a plan to try and fund the government? They do. They have two measures that they've proposed. One of those is going to cover six bills that fund parts of the government that have not been super controversial to fund, including places like Treasury and the State Department. And then another short-term bill would cover the Department of Homeland Security through February 8th.

And that just means that it would fund Homeland Security at its current levels, which include $1.3 billion for border security, and that this fight would happen pretty much all over again in about a month. And the president would still have to sign off on that bill? Right, yeah. And I think that's a big question that's up in the air. The Senate has actually passed this short-term funding bill before they left in December. And so I think Democratic leaders are saying that would be weird if Senate Republicans don't approve it again this time around. But, of course, a lot has also changed in the interim. And the president is meeting with leaders of both parties

today at the White House. Is it the Democratic slash Republican plan that they're going to talk about? Or is it some other priorities? Yeah, I think they're going to talk about it. They're supposed to get a briefing on border security. That's, I'm sure, going to touch on the wall, probably the importance of having a wall. And it's a little unclear what's going to come out of the meeting. I think there are a couple possible outcomes, one of which is that they miraculously decide to come together on a deal because both sides are getting pressure and it's important to keep the government open. A short-term deal, not the long-term solution? Right. Unless something insane happens, there's probably not going to be a long-term

resolution. And then I think the second is probably us seeing the same thing that happened before the holidays with the Chuck and Nancy meeting where everything just kind of blew up completely. Yeah, it was rough. Yeah. The president's framing this as, you know, I care about border security. I care about a wall. The Democrats don't. The Democrats want open borders. What have the Democrats done since President Trump took office to the end of border security? Is it true that they haven't really funded anything? I mean, have they signed on for anything? Yeah, I mean, they definitely have.

And I think the actual previous DHS appropriations bill includes money for border security, which covers fencing, technology, kind of an array of things that they are lumping together in that category. So they've definitely signed on bipartisan agreements. It's not true that they aren't for border security at all. It's just that right now, I think they are staying as far away as possible from funding anything that can be categorized as a wall. And is there a sense that Republicans aren't too hot on the idea either? I think what you're seeing is a lot of pressure from Trump and Republicans responding to that pressure. I think the indication that Senate Republicans were willing to approve something that did not include any wall money before the break is a pretty good indication that Republicans, this is not one of their like must-haves. But I think there's a portion of the base, including members of the

Freedom Caucus and the House, who've really urged Trump to kind of dig in his heels. And that's why you're seeing this fight right now. Up next, the wall as a rhetorical symbol, the wall as border security, the wall as a really bad way to spend $5 billion. This is Today Explained. I'm guessing you remember what you did on New Year's Eve 2018, like two days ago. But do you remember what you were doing on New Year's Eve 1999 when everyone was freaking out about Y2K. Were you even born then? If you weren't, or if you really want to know what happened on New Year's Eve 1999,

there's a podcast for you. It's called Headlong Surviving Y2K. It's from the people who brought you the podcast Missing Richard Simmons. If you liked that one, chances are you might like this one. Instead of looking for Richard Simmons, the people behind Headlong Surviving Y2K are looking for what really happened that New Year's Eve in 1999. From an evangelical family that was preparing for the apocalypse to the coders who fixed the millennium bug so nothing really happened. You can listen to the whole season of Headlong

Surviving Y2K right now on your Apple Podcasts, on your Spotify, on your Stitcher. Check it out. Matthew Iglesias, you're the host of the Weeds podcast here at Vox. This whole shutdown is about the wall. President Trump seems ready to die on that hill. Is anyone going to join him there? Well, it's hard to say, but the fundamental reason that we are having this particular standoff is that people in Trump's own coalition know that the wall is a kind of a dumb idea. If the president of the United States wants $5 billion for a pet project, normally he would get it. And the way you would get it is you would offer the opposition something else.

Maybe $5 billion for a pet project of theirs, or a policy concession that's important on some other subject. DACA or something. That has been what's in the mix. Trump has not been able to make deals like that because people in his own base have scuttled them. Because they know that even though the wall was an important campaign promise of Trump's, it doesn't make that big of a difference on the ground. So they won't give Democrats anything of value in exchange for the wall. And that's left Trump with the shutdown as his strategy.

So why is the wall a bad idea? The thing is, is that there are walls on the border already. A lot of them, actually. And if you go to San Diego, if you go to El Paso, if you go to McAllen, if you go to the major border communities, there's walls around it. So the places where it would be really easy to sneak across the border without a wall have mostly been walled. What's unwalled is open spaces, generally far from settlements, relatively easy to police, relatively difficult to construct a wall there. Meanwhile, the whole subject of the immigration debate has shifted.

At this point, the population of undocumented Mexican-born people has been falling. The undocumented population as a whole is falling. And what we have now when we debate about immigration, we are really talking about asylum seekers who are

trying to present themselves to Border Patrol. They want to get in touch with someone at the border. They're making these asylum claims, and there is a difficult debate about what we should do with them. And that was the caravan, these child detentions, family separations. And the wall has nothing to do with that debate, which is at the center of gravity here. The wall was this sort of potent piece of rhetorical symbolism,

but it has very little to do with actual immigration to the United States. So restrictionists don't want it badly enough to give Democrats anything. And so that's left Trump trying to use the shutdown to coerce them. But nobody's ever succeeded in getting what they want through this method. So what does that mean for negotiations? What does that mean for the budget? I mean, it means that negotiations keep focusing on different ways to try to fudge this, right? There was this earlier iteration where Democrats wanted action on DACA. And so because Democrats really wanted DACA, they then tried to say, okay, we will give you, Trump, something that you want, like a wall, right?

And that's legislation in a healthy kind of dynamic, except what happened was John Kelly and Freedom Caucus members started saying, no, no, no, that's a terrible deal. We won't take that deal, which made sense from their perspective. It made sense for Democrats to offer it, but it would have made sense for Trump. He could have said, look, like these dreamers, like they're not the bad guys in this immigration situation. So we're going to help them out. We're going to build a great, big, beautiful wall. It's going to be amazing.

But having rejected that, we're now left with sort of nothing, right? Where Trump is saying, well, Democrats, you have to swallow this wall and in exchange you get nothing at all. Democrats obviously aren't going to do that. They just won an election. If he really wants the wall, he has to give Democrats something. But Republicans don't want him to give Democrats anything. So we're stuck. We're stuck. We're stuck. He obviously prides himself on fulfilling his campaign promises. Is there a sense that if he didn't fulfill this one, his base would abandon him? That doesn't seem likely.

I mean, that's what he's talked himself into. But it's a very strange thing because Trump at times really doubles down on campaign promises, right? Like promises made, promises kept. It's like at the backdrop of his rallies. Promises made and promises kept. Promises made, promises kept. President Trump made promises, but he's kept many more promises. I mean, far more than I made. Think of it. It's true. At the same time, you know, he broke his campaign promises about Medicaid. He broke his campaign promises about clean air and clean water. I mean, he breaks promises all the time. You could always say as the president, what you meant by wall was we were going to make the border more secure. And this deal, which includes whatever it is, right? Yeah.

Truck inspections or extra asylum claim people or judges or, you know, like a little drone that flies around somewhere. That helps secure the border. That's what I meant by the wall. And like, are people really going to abandon Trump over that? Like, I'm a little bit skeptical. And in the meantime, government shutdowns are beginning to feel normal. How bad is that for our democracy? It's not a great sign, right? I mean, we didn't used to have shutdowns at all. The old legal interpretation was that the government

stayed open unless there was some affirmative action to close it. Shutdowns seem to be becoming more common just because it's been normalized in Congress. Has this tool already been overused? Is it already something that's sort of lost its potency, shutting down the government? It's hard to say. You know, I mean, Democrats tried it and it had very little kind of impact for them. And it didn't last very long. In part because they knew it wasn't really going to work. In their minds, conservatives think, well, we don't even like government bureaucrats. So having them not working, like that's not so bad. Like maybe it's actually really good.

Nobody's been bothered yet exactly. But, you know, people are going to start wanting to file and get their tax refunds. And if they can't do that, like that's going to impact a a lot of people and they're gonna be pretty mad. And that's where I don't know, you might start to see the repercussions of this. People love a good principled stand. And they really love a sort of symbolic battle about walls, pro wall, anti wall, things like that. But then sometimes politics touch your life personally, right? Like you wanted to get some money back from the government, but now you can't, right? Or you wanted to get clearance to do something new with your company, and now you can't.

Or you wanted to take your family on vacation to a national park, and now you can't. That's when things change. Matthew Iglesias is a senior correspondent at Vox. I'm Sean Ramos-Virum. This is season two of Today Explained. We got your back like chiroprac. Thanks for listening. Thank you.