ASSOCIATED PRESS
From left, Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., attended a U.S. House Rules Committee meeting to prepare an appropriations bill for a fl oor vote, at the Capitol in Washington on Friday.
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The prospect of a government shutdown is costly and absurd, practically unknown to the Western world. Passing a budget ranks at the top of a government’s responsibilities.
Governments that cannot pass a budget are dissolved by some mechanism and new elections are held for the simple fact that the government is deemed incapable in its most basic task. Yet we head to the ledge every year and too often go over it. How can we call this a government?
The public should have to feel the real effects of this incompetence. Those sites operated by essential federal workers — workers now made to show up without pay — should be closed. Tell the Border Patrol to stay home. Tell Transportation Security Administration officers to stay home.
Let the public see and feel how their government works when our security services, border patrol and airports are shut down. Let the public get a civics lesson in how elections do have consequences.
Lowell B. Denny III
Kailua-Kona
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