Government requires negotiations, not tantrums, shutdowns or show-boating | Editorial

This editorial represents the views of the Palm Beach Post Editorial Board, not necessarily of the Post newsroom.

We’ve narrowly avoided yet another government shutdown. That gives us time to consider all that our federal government does for us in Florida, all that will be on the line six weeks from now, when the kill-the-beast philosophy rears its Brylcreemed head again.

As you cross Florida on its smooth interstates and Turnpike, think of the government that made them possible and maintains them. Think of how you ride over the majestic Sunshine Skyway in St. Pete, the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne, Overseas Highway to the Florida Keys, and countless other bridges and elevated roadways, without fear of their collapse.

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The infrastructure of our lives

Think of the ease with which you can fly from West Palm Beach to Tallahassee, Orlando or across the Atlantic, protected by Transportation Security Administration agents at the airports and guided by well-trained air traffic controllers operating sophisticated navigational systems from a control tower just a few years old. Think of the federal government that put all that in place to elevate your life, figuratively and literally, directing tax revenues toward those programs, either directly or through the arteries of state agencies, like the Florida Department of Transportation.

When ships leave the Port of Palm Beach, taking cruise passengers to the Bahamas, or groceries to Caribbean isles, they can do so because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sees to it that waterways are dredged regularly and the Coast Guard sees to it that sea lanes are safe.

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Closer to home, when a Greenacres Florida mom can’t afford to feed her kids, the federally supported Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program puts food on the table. Veterans Administration programs help Floridians who’ve put lives on the line to defend our democracy.

The federal government runs the social security system, ensuring secure retirements for hundreds of thousands of Palm Beach County senior citizens who contributed their lifetimes’ work to our nation’s productivity. The Affordable Care Act makes health insurance more affordable for some 150,000 of the county’s residents.

Tearing the safety net

All this, all the ways in which the government extends protections of law, liberty and countless programs that provide safety nets to shield us from grievous misfortune, may seem obvious to some, even most of us. But others find it more useful to take them for granted. For them it’s tempting to portray the U.S. government as a beast to slay, and to poke at it for performance politics.

But shutting it down, an impetuous act at best, deprives government workers nationwide of paychecks and deprives all of us in Palm Beach County and Florida of the important needs those public servants fill. Government is not a beast, not a metaphor at all. It’s real. And as inefficient as it can be, it’s here to help. And when it’s not here for us, when some would rather shut it down for political gamesmanship than do the hard work of collaborating to bring about improvements, it hurts many.

So, when Florida congressmen like Matt Gaetz, R-Pensacola, or Byron Donalds, R-Naples, and others on the extreme right of the U.S. House of Representatives, scheme to hold up Congress’s work – for the sake of abortion laws or unspecified government overspending or whatever their rationalization du jour ― they’re not helping. Through their thoughtless immaturity, they’re hurting us, holding the rest of us hostage.

There’s no question there’s blame to go around for the festering public distrust of government that gives these extremists an opening. Democrats and Republicans of every stripe have long made it part of the political culture to lard the budget with pork and seldom trim the fat. And the tax-cutting that some champion has never fixed that; it has just served as an excuse to shift more of the burden of government to those who can least afford it.

Getting government right takes long, hard work of negotiation and compromise. So, let’s use this moment to move in that direction, because there’ll be more threatened shutdowns if we don’t. The 45-day continuing resolution that averted this latest shutdown surely will be followed by more threats. So, let the spotlight these revolutionaries so crave expose their antics for what they are, while others in their party emerge from captivity to stand up for responsible government.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Government shutdowns hurt Floridians