Another Government Shutdown?

In Wednesday’s OpinionJournal.com Political Diary, John Fund writes that House minority whip Roy Blunt told reporters that he believes President Bush will deliver on his threat to veto the budget bills currently working their way through Congress. And with enough Republicans on record agreeing to uphold the veto, Blunt suggests we might end up witnessing a government shutdown later this year.

As you might recall from the mid-1990s, a federal government shutdown does not mean that every federal agency stops whatever it is they are doing. It’s only the non-essential ones that grind to a temporary halt – and, yes, there is an official definition of what constitutes essential government functions: mainly law enforcement and defense. That Congress continues to fund everything else is what keeps policy wonks like me busy.

Maybe Blunt's statements are the opening gambit in a political game of chicken. There might be little interest in a government shutdown among the Democratic leaders in Congress. So the follow-up to an upheld Bush veto would likely be a compromise stop-gap measure (like a “continuing resolution” that puts the government on auto-pilot for the rest of the fiscal year) that results in much less spending than would otherwise occur in the course of an unimpeded appropriations cycle.

In either case, those of us who prefer divided government might have another example to add to our growing “Great Moments in Gridlock” list.