This was my first reaction as well, but then I thought about it for a bit, and realised that congress still getting paid is an essential check and balance on executive power.

Congressional salaries need to be free of the influence of presidents threatening to shutdown government if their agenda isn't voted on, otherwise the threat of withheld pay could substantially effect how congresspeople vote.

That's a bigger problem, even if the optics of congresspeople still getting paid during a shutdown is bad.

Congress could just pass a law saying the government stays open by default, going back to how things were before a few decades ago, and avoid the whole problem.

The executive’s cooperation is not needed here. The president cannot shut down the government. The most he can do is veto a law, and congress can override it.

> The president cannot shut down the government.

And yet for all intents and purposes he has, because he's wielding his veto powers and congress hasn't passed a law to stay open by default.

Now imagine the dynamic where congressional salaries were being withheld also, and is it possible that it could influence the votes of ~10 or so senators Trump needs to get wall funding approved?

Maybe, maybe not, but it's not a healthy dynamic for the president to be able to exert such direct financial pressure on congresspeople.

> Congress could just pass a law saying the government stays open by default

You say 'just', but do you really see the current congress passing such a law? I don't think it is just that simple.

The only thing making any of this difficult is that Congress doesn’t want to do it. If they wanted to find the government, it would be funded. If they wanted to have the government stay open by default, it would be done. It’s not that simple, but only because a substantial part of Congress doesn’t want to do this.

I don’t think this financial pressure would change anything. But it would be trivial to avoid if they wanted to.

The partial goverment shutdown is caused by the president's unwillingness to sign a bill as well as Congress's inability to pass a bill the president is willing to sign.

The defused blame sets the game matrix to a state where the delta value between the bill congress agrees on and the bill the president will sign is significantly larger than the defecting penalty any oneside side will suffer. Removing a paycheck from all actors won't provide a significant adjustment to the game matrix, because the reputation deduction portion of the the defector penalty is significantly more valuable than salary. Some actors actually see a reputation increase for fighting this fight.

While increasing the defector penalty is a good idea, reduction of salary doesn't increase it much.

A logical but morally flawed view. All services for both the congress and the executive branch (with the exception of the absolutely minimum required) should be stopped at this point. Cars, gym, Internet, TV, etc. No TV in the office of the congress, none in the White House. Meals should be cut to Army rations for the president, etc. We as citizens should demand this. In a rational system the failure of supply should trigger an election. The least we can do here is remove all but the most required items. A sensible solution would be for us to pass a law that requires funding to continue based on the last levels. I am tried of our leaders playing chicken with the lives of others. Our government on both sides lacks consequences for their actions.

In 1975 in Australia, that’s pretty much what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

A little more complicated, but it was sparked by the inability to pass the supply bill, which funds government expenditure.

> The partial goverment shutdown is caused by the president's unwillingness to sign a bill as well as Congress's inability to pass a bill the president is willing to sign.

you forgot: or pass a bill the president can't sign, by overriding a veto

but that also requires even greater consensus than Congress can currently achieve.

The Senate unanimously passed a budget bill to extend current funding levels into February. It had a good chance of veto-proof supermajority support in the House, but the outgoing Speaker of the House refused to bring it to a vote.

> you forgot: or pass a bill the president can't sign, by overriding a veto

Are you talking about passing a bill with such a high majority that the president cannot veto the bill? I wonder if the budget was ever passed with such a majority.

You're pretending people are rational automata who make decisions in their own self interest, which is rarely true in life. Very rarely true among political actors.

I hope we can stop treating politics as a silly statistics game theory simulation for every actor and decision, because two decades of thinking like that has clearly not worked out for us. New ways of thinking, including consequences for bad actors, are a way to move the needle forward a bit even if it's not Spock's ideal solution.

> You're pretending people are rational automata who make decisions in their own self interest, which is rarely true in life.

why do you think this? I would wager that most people are acting in the way they think is best, either for themselves or the people around them, either of which is a form of self-interest. Often in my experience what seems to me to be irrational from the outside is in fact very rational, and I just didn't have all the pertinent information.

I don't know, he seems to be right. Most people would ignore what they know to be good for them most of the times when it counts.

Some of the examples that I can think of are

  Exercise good for health is known fact.
  Eating healthy food.
  Global warming consideration in day today work.
  Cigarette smoking.
  Continuous study vs last minute study for exams.

> Some of the examples that I can think of are

You are assuming other people's goals - "good for you" is not always a clear objective measure. For some example counters:

> Exercise good for health is known fact.

> Eating healthy food.

It also takes more time and most people find exercise and health food somewhat unpleasant compared to not taking these choices. If you're not optimising for longevity (which most people aren't, and it's not immediately obvious that they should given you're arguably subtracting usable time now to add time later on) then these aren't inherently rational choices.

> Global warming consideration in day today work.

This is a classic externality. It's perfectly logical to not shoulder the burden of trying to save the planet, especially if you don't think your efforts will make a difference. It's more of a moral responsibility, which while perfectly valid, it's not inherently rational to accept said responsibilities.

> Cigarette smoking.

There are many reasons people smoke, even though they know they're bad for you (though arguably lung cancer falls under the "won't happen to me" and "it's a problem for future me" logic fallacies, though then again people tend to positively weight benefits in youth vs costs in old age which seems sensible-ish). Social status. Being able to remain in the "in-group" if friends smoke. A feeling of danger or risk of being caught. All of these are reasons someone might start smoking as a teenager. which AFAIK is when most smokers start.

> Continuous study vs last minute study for exams.

That's genuinely irrational, and obviously ties into the way our brains work. My point wasn't that people are never irrational; it was that often behaviours that seem irrational from the outside make some kind of sense from the perspective of the participant/s. People don't generally just do things for no reason and rationality is inseparable from context.

I will agree that people do not typically act rationally, the entire field of economics learned this lesson the hard way.

I think people act very strategically with their political careers, and while they may make blunders they are caused by bad luck and incompetence more than a lack of rational thought, especially at the national level.

Yes, but politics is also a game about making people feel that their government is fair and legitimate, not 'merely' efficient at decisionmaking.

Right, the largest sufferer of reputation loss is Congress's collective brand. Individual actors are relatively consequence free.

That’s even worse. Congresspeople don’t make a ton of money and starving them just pushes out the less wealthy.

I thought congress people make about $80,000 a year. That's a big chunk of change across most of the country.

Members of Congress make $174,000/year [1]. That is about 3x the median household (not individual) income in the US [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_Uni...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

The median household doesn’t maintain homes in Washington and some other place.

Not in DC where their employer is.

But nothing in Washington DC.

Representatives make 174k

Before the Reagan administration, the government stayed open while Congress dithered about debating appropriations. The shutdown is all politics top-to-bottom.

And not paying Congress would require a constitutional amendment so not really worth the consternation.

Not only should they not see a cent, they should be heavily fined for refusing to do the job they were elected to do.

They should have done unpaid overtime until the situation was resolved.

Better yet, every single one of them should automatically lose their position and have a forced election to replace them (..maybe they can run again for the job they already have).

How many people can just walk out of their job with no consequences?

A president should not have veto power over the budget.

Nor the power to pardon for that matter.

The country should have learned from Nixon that modeling the president as an elected 18th century king is long obsolete.

The President having veto power over the budget is not the problem, the complete lack of any sort of ability to compromise amongst either party's leadership is.

Without veto power Congress could ram through all manner of pork barrel spending without anyone to check them.

The Senate passed the bill 100-0. The lack of compromise is not the problem. The problem is that Paul Ryan is retiring and he refuses to bring the bill for a revote because there's no consequences at all for him.

With veto power, a president could hold the budget hostage until a demand was met.

Yes and Congress can override his veto. That's how the checks and balances work.

I think Citizens United vs FEC [1] will be looked at by history as the real turning point (to decline) of the US federal republic.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Nice, sentiment.. but hopefully that's not how politics works.