Virginia Republican Bob Good messed up and said the quiet part about the government shutdown he so desperately wants to happen out loud.
“Most of what we do up here is bad anyway,” said Good, an oddball, in that he went out of his way to seek employment in the federal government, literally pushed other people out of the way to get the job, gets paid handsomely to work for the government, and maintains that awesome salary by pretending to hate what he does.
Anyway, this was Good, who represents the Fifth District, which runs through Charlottesville and Albemarle County down Route 29 all the way to the Carolina border, speaking at a rally outside the U.S. Capitol last week that was held to push another ill-conceived effort at a government shutdown over something or the other, we’re not sure exactly what, and from the looks of it, neither are they.
Remember here that Good is among the 147 congressional Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 presidential election.
And make sure to never forget that.
Good, and his ilk, are about politics as performance art.
The latest looming shutdown is the result of House Republican leaders deciding last week to postpone votes on the latest in a series of stopgap government funding measures in favor of giving the House a six-week vacation, which, when’s the last time you got a six-week vacation?
In addition to the revealing line about “most of what we do up here is bad anyway,” Good dropped another demonstrating how utterly tone-deaf he is to how regular people live.
“Most of the American people won’t even miss it if the government is shut down temporarily,” Good said at that made-for-TV Capitol rally last week.
We wouldn’t miss it, huh?
“When we’ve seen government shutdowns in the past, we know how devastating it is,” U.S. Sen Mark Warner said last week, ahead of laying out what Americans would miss.
“People you lay off, air traffic controllers, the safety of our airspace is in jeopardy,” the senator said. “If you end up shutting down our national parks, people’s lungs and plans for holidays are shut down, which has an economic ripple effect. Shut down our federal government, and people who are already waiting too long for passports won’t get them.”
“When I saw that, quote, I assumed he had been misquoted,” said U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, adding to Warner’s list of people impacted how “seniors will worry about getting Social Security checks,” “people on Social Security disability who depend on that worry about whether they will continue to receive support.”
“The notion that a government shutdown doesn’t hurt anybody, you know, ask a military family, ask a hardworking parks employee, ask people that rely on government services every day about what they would think of a government shutdown,” Kaine said.
And then there’s this little ditty: government employees still get paid.
They just don’t have to show up for work.
“In the last government shutdown, we passed a law signed off by everybody that says, if you have a future government shutdown, government employees are still going to get paid. So, anyone who says, I have no problem with a government shutdown, you’re gonna still spend taxpayer money paying government employees, but the services aren’t going to be available,” Warner said.
It’s performance art, is what we’re saying here.
“If everybody’s going to get paid anyway, why would you shut government down, lock them out of their offices and tell them that they can’t answer the phone and help a constituent solve a problem or work on an inspection of an infant formula facility that they’re obligated to provide a safety inspection for?” Kaine said.
“It’s not fiscally conservative to pay federal employees to not do their jobs,” Kaine said. “We should find a budget, and we will. And despite the fact that some are cheerleading for a shutdown, I’m confident that’s not what Virginians or American citizens think.”
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Chris Graham
