At least Croatia’s government isn’t shutting down

(The Croatian version of this article ran in today's Jutarnji List, Croatia's largest daily.)

An Expat in Zagreb

By Roger Malone

If Croatians ever despair over the quirks of their government, they can glance across the seas and take heart. In today's world, there is no government more broken than Washington. The US government is so out of order that it’s shut down, and if it’s not fixed, the ripples could soon be felt even in Croatia.

When people learn I’ve lived outside America for decades, they often ask what I miss most by being overseas. I usually dance around the question, but the truth is that my one real regret is not having the opportunity to participate directly in the political system. I yearn to beat the pavement for politicians and causes I support, and at one point I even imagined running for office if I ever moved back. Taking cheap shots at Tea Party conservatives on Facebook just doesn't fill the gap.
 
(I also miss a handful of consumer goods, like Old Bay seasoning, cling wrap that tears easily from the box and cheddar cheese.)

But I haven’t missed what passes for politics these days in America. Once there was a civil conversation of opposing views; today there are sound bites inspired by talking points found on the Internet. The tone has been hijacked by a group of extreme conservatives centered on the Tea Party and convinced of their righteousness. Now the hijackers have taken hostages: 310 million Americans, and perhaps even all the world.

Some Croatian officials might be corrupt. Some might be incompetent. And some might even be self serving. But as far as I can see, no elected official in Croatia is as terrifyingly delusional as this select group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. My mother was a precinct worker for Richard Nixon, a Republican president who resigned just before being forced out of office, and even she would be appalled by today’s party.

So what happened? Soon after being elected president in 2008, Barrack Obama tackled one of the most embarrassing problems of the US system: the absence of universal health care. For the world’s biggest economy, the fact that nearly 50 million Americans had no health insurance was immoral. The Affordable Care Act—better known as Obamacare—was a first step toward fixing the problem and was itself a compromise with conservatives who opposed a more extensive approach.

After Obamacare was passed, Republicans in Congress tried 44 times to repeal or dilute Obamacare. They failed. A Supreme Court lawsuit challenged its constitutionality. It failed. Republicans opposed Obama’s re-election in 2012, in part by promising to reverse Obamacare. They failed.
Now, a small band of Republican diehards, led by House Republican Leader John Boehner, is getting desperate. As Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “For the right wing minority, hostage taking is all they have left.”

In the US, a president can’t spend a dollar unless it’s approved by Senators and Representatives. The Senate has approved continued spending; the House of Representatives hasn’t. The House passed a measure that would cripple Obamacare in the process, but the Senate rejected it. Ironically, an unencumbered budget measure would likely pass the House easily if it came to a vote, but Boehner, as leader of the House, has refused to put one up for a vote. He fears that a couple of dozen extreme house members would rebel, and as last year’s presidential election showed, the Republican Party is suffering. Alienating its right wing could make winning future national elections impossible.

Federal budget authorization ended Oct. 1, and the US government shut down. About 800,000 federal workers—roughly the population of Zagreb—were sent home without pay and no guarantee of keeping their jobs when the government reopens. Another million are working without pay. The military and other essential services got an exception, but parks and other federal offices have locked their doors. Even the NASA’s Mars explorer Curiosity was turned off.

The US federal government has shut down before, in the mid-1990s, and then reopened a few weeks later with little long-term impact. Then, the economy was booming. This time the United States—and much of the world—is still struggling through a fragile recovery from the 2008 global economic crisis. And this time, another political battle, this one over the US debt ceiling, is only weeks away. Without an agreement on the debt ceiling, which the Republican right also opposes, there could be sharp US spending cuts and the possibility of defaulting on US bonds.

Economists have argued that a prolonged US government shutdown coupled with an impasse over the debt ceiling could send the country back into recession. Paul Krugman, at the New York Times, wrote that a US debt default could “create a huge financial crisis, dwarfing the crisis” of 2008. (Croatia is still looking for economic recovery, and another global crisis could destroy any hope it has.) Boehner and his cohorts are willing to risk all this because they don’t like Obamacare, which has withstood every legal test, and because they really don’t like Obama.

Meanwhile, Obama and the Democrats are unlikely to budge, either. First of all, they played Boehner’s game to disastrous results last time the debt ceiling came to Congress. Next, Obamacare is rightfully the legacy of its namesake’s presidential tenure. And finally, as others have written as well, bowing to Boehner would threaten the very fabric of democracy. Really. Democracy is based on majority rule—without oppressing the minority—and if you don’t have the votes, you don’t have the votes. You don’t resort to desperate tactics. You work to win the next election.

Compared to shutting down the government and possibly bringing the world to the brink of another financial crisis, taking some money from a contractor here or giving cousin Pero a job are playground antics. So, if you ever look at the Sabor in misery, just repeat to yourself, at least we're not America.

[Follow Roger Malone on twitter at @ExpatinZagreb or at http://expatinzagreb.blogspot.com/]