Could Congress and the White House be dumb enough to trigger a mini-government shutdown during the Christmas shopping season? Inquiring merchants — from San Antonio; Oklahoma City; Huntsville to Elizabethtown, Kentucky; Charleston, South Carolina; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Ogden, Utah want to know.

The short answer, sadly, to that rhetorical question is Y-E-S.

D.C. is what most politicians think of when they think government/mischief. But to their back-home voters, in Montana, Washington state, North Dakota, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and California, the federal government is very local, in offices where the people who voted them in actually vote.

If there is a government shutdown — especially in December with the economy and the stock market red hot — will many of their very best customers be sitting at home — without a paycheck — waiting for Washington to get its act together? Could it trigger a mini-recession that could bring on the long-overdue stock market correction of 30-plus percent? Great if you are buying shares for your TSP account, not so great if you are cashing them in to help finance your retirement.

Will a shutdown actually happen? Probably not. But the politicians have played this game before with an extended shutdown during the Clinton administration, when interns (rather than furloughed feds) served at the White House. We know how that worked out! There was another shutdown a couple of years back, when hundreds of thousands of feds were forced to stay home and do nothing. Except not work and not get paid. Eventually, workers got paid — for doing nothing — but for many who live paycheck-to-paycheck, the late catch-up payments were just that. Too late.

Most shutdowns are triggered by a partisan political fight. One or both sides push it often for different reasons. When it happens, they denounce the stupidity of closing national parks. The media and public then assign blame — usually depending on their political leanings — while the public loses as it picks up the tab for getting nothing.

While Washington, D.C. is the battleground and target, what many pols don’t seem to get is the importance of the federal payroll in their state or congressional district. If there is a military base, an Air Force base or Navy facility, it may be the largest employer around. And its employees the biggest spenders.

If there is a federal prison, a VA hospital or an IRS service center, you have a company town and Uncle Sam is the company. Ogden, Utah is living, thriving proof. If you don’t work for the Air Force, the Interior Department or the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden, you probably work for a company, store, restaurant or parking lot that depends on the federal salary dollar to survive. So cutting off the primary payroll pipeline could be a big-time problem in the prime 2017 shopping season for many, if not most, merchants.

So once again, we enter December preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

Tom Hanks was being considered for the lead role in the movie “Groundhog Day,” but director Harold Ramis said he chose Bill Murray because Hanks was “too nice.”

Source: IMDB

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