Capital update: shutdown looms

It’s unlikely that a temporary federal government shutdown would do too much damage to UNC or North Carolina — but here in D.C., it’s another story.

It could be a painful experience for the city, and it’s not that improbable. The intern crowd should survive OK, though.

Yesterday our class made it into Congress and spent the afternoon with a veteran finance staffer.

The day was a break from the mundane, starting off rather jolly as we took photos from the balcony overlooking the Mall. And it all got rather sobering as he spoke about the current budget situation.

In case you’ve missed it: If there’s no budget compromise before March 4, then all non-essential parts of the federal government will be forced to stop operating, lacking appropriated funding from Congress.

When I first heard that, I couldn’t quite banish visions of D.C. grinding to a halt, devoid of everyone from law enforcement to librarians, even though I knew it was wrong.

A shutdown doesn’t affect essential services, thank God, but all non-essential services cease, as there’s no money to pay for them and workers aren’t allowed to “volunteer.”

The last time this happened, that meant a lot of federal workers at home without pay — for weeks. And with more than 300,000 federal employees in the D.C. area, that’s a lot of people short of money and spending less in the local economy.

Okay, it may not mean too much for the intern: no wages isn’t necessarily too different from the norm (for the unpaid intern at least). And closed offices would mean a day off to sleep in (or even sunbathe, if last week’s dream weather comes back).

“Maybe they’ll let us run the department,” mused one housemate who works in the executive branch. “I heard Monica Lewinsky had her start in the White House during the 1995 shutdown… ” she trails off.

But interns aside, it’s obvious that people in this city generally aren’t too thrilled about it.

Our host for the day, a senior Democratic staffer, was pessimistic about a compromise by next Friday’s deadline.

On the one hand, the gulf between the Republican-controlled House and Obama’s White House is massive: Obama has said he would veto a bill with the same level of cuts that the House passed last week, while Boehner upped the stakes with his “read my lips” line about the pledge to cut taxes.

On the other hand, Senate rules mean that one stubborn Senator could delay a last-minute compromise for days and force a shutdown — or at least that’s how I understood it, after a rather confusing explanation of procedure in the Senate.

And even though our host staffer tells his grown-up children who work in government that everything will be okay, he’s definitely worrying already.

If you can drag yourself away from UNC student politics, this could be an interesting few weeks to watch in Washington, D.C.

Mark Laichena is a guest columnist for the Daily Tar Heel. He is a junior poli sci and peace, war and defense major from London, UK. Contact him at laichena@email.Unc.Edu