Lay Off Congress

Why Is Congress Still Getting Paid While the Government Burns?

Congress keeps cashing its checks while the government burns. Every member, every day, paid in full. The Constitution guarantees their salaries no matter what—an 18th-century safeguard against royal punishment that's now a 21st-century shield for cowardice. Meanwhile, the quiet machinery that keeps civilization running—rangers, scientists, inspectors, clerks—sits home without pay.

The government's shut down again—at least the part that does any good. The lights are still on in the Pentagon. The prisons are still locked. But the people who test your water, inspect your bridges, process disaster relief? They're wondering how to make rent.

My Republican friends are thrilled. The IRS is closed. No audits, no letters, no calls. They tell me this is what small government looks like—freedom from interference, less waste, fewer bureaucrats. But while they cheer the IRS silence, they help Trump expand federal power everywhere else: censorship disguised as "patriotism," loyalty tests for civil servants, executive orders edging closer each time to rule by decree.

They don't believe in small government. They believe in government that obeys them. They believe in the pre-1965 government, before the Voting Rights Act made democracy real for everyone. That's their golden age—when government knew its place and kept others in theirs. Government by the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male.

This shutdown didn’t just happen. It was caused—manufactured—by a Congress that no longer knows how to govern. The House hardliners, led by Trump’s most obedient disciples, refused to fund the government unless they got their list of ideological trophies: immigration crackdowns, cuts to social programs, investigations into enemies, and an end to the healthcare protections that keep millions from bankruptcy. Democrats, for their part, demanded extensions of healthcare subsidies to keep those same families afloat. It’s not a standoff between equals—it’s a hostage situation.

Meanwhile, the Senate caved again, afraid of being called traitors by a man who’s made treason his career. Nobody remembers how to compromise without a gun to someone’s head.

They’ve lost their way.

And yet, every time they fail, they get paid. The Founders protected Congressional pay to prevent kings from starving out democracy. They didn’t imagine Congress would starve democracy itself. A few members like to announce they’re "refusing their pay" during shutdowns, but it’s theater. The checks pile up in escrow and are paid the moment the lights come back on. Meanwhile, federal workers—legally forbidden to strike during shutdowns—stand in food lines. They can’t even fight back while Congress plays games.

This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s vandalism disguised as virtue.

Trump is already using the shutdown as leverage—another pretext to expand presidential power. The longer the crisis drags on, the more he can frame himself as the only one who can “fix” it. The same old game: light up the house, then demand the deed in exchange for the hose. And his Republican lackeys play along, terrified of crossing him, each pretending they’re defending taxpayers while they destroy the system those taxpayers built.

The damage isn’t abstract. Families miss rent. Contractors lose businesses they’ll never reopen. Students can’t get federal aid processed. Food inspections stall. Disaster relief stops. Veterans wait for checks that don’t come. Healthcare costs explode, with or without a deal. Since 1976, we’ve had 21 government shutdowns. In the forty years before that? Zero. Each shutdown makes the next one easier, normalizing dysfunction until breakdown becomes business as usual. Every shutdown erodes something invisible: faith that the country can still govern itself.

For decades, Republicans preached about small government, local control, and personal responsibility. Now they’ve built an empire of Trump’s design and call it freedom. They can’t pass a budget, but they can pass the blame. They say Democrats caused this, but the record is clear: it’s Trump’s party that broke the machinery, and they keep breaking it because that’s the only thing they still know how to do.

Congress should be the brake on that power. Instead, it’s the accomplice. The cowards in the House, the enablers in the Senate—they’ve turned public office into a survival game. Fiscal restraint while burning billions on theater. Patriotism while kneeling to a man who spits on the law.

Shutdowns used to mean failure. Now they’re just performance.

For now, the planes still land, and the lights still burn. But the people who run this country's heart—the ones who test the water, inspect the bridges, feed the hungry—are home unpaid, wondering how long they can hold on. They keep getting paid to let the country burn.

The Founders didn’t imagine this—a Congress too frightened to govern and too comfortable to care. They believed in checks and balances. We’ve got checks without balance.