Friday night, after dinner at Filomena in Georgetown and a performance of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband at the Shakespeare Theater, Cerise and I stopped by the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Hotel for some refreshments. We arrived just as word came that Congress had – pretty much literally at the eleventh hour – agreed to finally start acting like sane adults and pass a budget for the remainder of federal Fiscal Year 2011, which began, believe it or not, last October. Since then, the United States of America had been running its government with funding from no less than six consecutive continuing resolutions of Congress, the last of which was to expire Friday at midnight. The drama of an impending shutdown of the Executive Branch had kept most thoughtful, informed Americans (that’s right – I have it on very good authority that there actually are such people), world financial markets, the international community, about eight hundred thousand federal workers and God knows how many federal contractors on tenter hooks for weeks, as they contemplated the dire consequences of Habenae Governmentus Interruptus. But as of a quarter past eleven last night, that problem was settled – for Fiscal Year 2011, which, as I mentioned, at this point is already a bit more than half over. Congress can now move on to more interesting, protracted, convoluted and entertaining philosophial squabbles, ideological brawls, rhetorical mud slinging contests and political pie fights about the budget for Fiscal Year 2012, a three-ring circus nearly guaranteed to reprise yet another exciting shutdown cliff-hanger. But to the crowd at the Round Robin last night, all that seemed days, if not weeks away, as business at the bar picked up substantially in response to our elected leaders’ collective ukase of at least temporary reprieve from a foaming, frothing, gnashing and raving conniption fit of Constitutional lunacy.
That news came too late for one sad soul, though. Despite the jovial relief that spread among everyone else, he sat, sullen and inconsolable, weeping over his beer by himself at a corner table.
“Oh dear,” Cerise fretted as she noticed him, “what do you suppose is the matter with that poor man over there?”
A moment’s inspection allowed me to identify him. “Cuthbert?” I exclaimed. “Beats me.”
“You know him?” Cerise wondered aloud.
“He’s one of my clients,” I explained, “from the Commerce Department.”
“What’s he do at Commerce?” Cerise curiously inquired.
“He’s the world’s foremost expert,” I divulged, “on the economic policy of soybeans.”
“Well,” Cerise suggested, “if he’s a business acquaintance, why don’t you go on over there and cheer him up?”
One thing I know from experience with the opposite gender is, when your significant other suggests you display some compassion for another human being, you had better damn well do it. So I did. “Cuthbert, old boy, why the long face?” I opened as I sat down at his table. “The 2011 budget deal finally went down. You’re going in to work at the Commerce Department on Monday morning after all. Shouldn’t you be celebrating like all these other people?”
“No,” Cuthbert moaned, “I can’t.”
“How come?” I pressed.
“Because,” he slowly choked out, “even though we didn’t have a shutdown, we got close enough for my boss to distribute… the memos.”
“Oh,” I surmised, “I suppose you mean, the memos that told each member of his staff what to do when the shutdown began?”
“Yes,” he wailed, seeking brief solace in a large quaff of beer. “And the one I got… said… I’m… non-essential!”
“I’m sure it didn’t say that,” I confidently responded. “None of the memoranda issued in Washington yesterday said that.”
“Yeah,” he spat, “it said ‘not excepted’ instead. But that’s just a euphemism, and everybody knows it.”
“I’m sure,” I vouched, “that there are certain subtle, yet… highly significant… differences…”
“I was essential during the snowstorm!” Cuthbert insisted. “Soybeans continued to grow, to be harvested, to be shipped and traded, and then turned into a myriad of products – all over the world! I had to come in to work! It was absolutely necessary! Soybeans, I tell you Tom, they care not one iota for the vicissitudes of Washington’s climate! And soybeans will continue to do all those things when the United States of America has lapse of appropriation, too!”
“No doubt about it,” I agreed, “the solvency of the United States doesn’t mean doodly squat to a soybean – nor does it mean anything to a bushel of corn, a cotton plant or an oil well, for that matter. I suppose the decision had to be based, ultimately, on the marginal utility of information at its point of unitary factor elasticity, compensated for…”
“God damn it, Tom,” Cuthbert interrupted, “my boss designated the [expletive] corn, cotton and oil guys as essential!”
“Excepted,” I corrected.
“Whatever!” Cuthbert snapped. “Their memos all said they had to report to work Monday, shutdown or no shutdown; and mine said I should stay home! They were all going to be attending meetings, sending emails, talking on the telephones in their offices, texting on their government-provided Blackberries, having biweekly consultations with you...” he eyed me accusingly, “… while I would be stuck at home – with my wife – and she’d be making me clean out the garage, patch that hole in the driveway, carry that junk in the basement to the dump, spray the roses, mulch the garden, mow the lawn, rent a machine from U-Haul and clean the God damn rugs, for Christ’s sake! Don’t you understand, Tom? If you’re essential…”
“Excepted,” I noted again.
“Whatever!” Cuthbert shot back. “If you have to come in to the office during a government shutdown, then you can justify having your wife pay some illegal aliens to do all that stuff you’ve always said you’re too busy to do, like taking those boxes down from the attic and opening them up so she can finally see what the hell is in them; or the regular household chores you hate, like cleaning out the pool! But if you’re a non-essential federal employee, then you just sit there at home, and you don’t have one single, plausible excuse to get out of that crap! So you have to do it! And there you are – the world’s foremost expert on the implications of tariff policy for international soybean markets – replacing window screens, painting the back porch, fixing holes in the chain link fence the stupid neighbor’s dog dug out, and, what’s more, standing in line at Home Depot with the illegal immigrants who are doing those things for the essential federal employees who still have a God damn excuse for not doing them because they still have to be in downtown Washington in their office, no matter what!”
“Maybe the real solution,” I speculated, “lies elsewhere. Have you ever considered marriage counseling?”
“My wife,” Cuthbert huffed, “happens to be a marriage counselor! And furthermore…”
“Whoops,” I interjected, “sorry about that. My bad. Maybe marriage counseling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, then.”
“Marriage,” Cuthbert informed me, “according to my wife, the marriage counselor, with a double major in women’s history and sexual politics plus a master’s degree in social work, is actually very simple. The husband follows the wife’s orders and remembers to apologize for patriarchal male oppression while he’s at it. Now do you understand why I couldn’t possibly spend several weeks at home in the totally emasculated professional condition that being declared ‘non-essential’ entails?”
“Well,” I opined, “the situation you’re describing is basically sui generis, is it not? I mean, really, how many non-essential and/or non-excepted male federal employees are married to domineering feminist harpies who would exploit the situation implicit in a government shutdown in order to turn those unfortunate gentlemen into sweating, downtrodden, humiliated beasts of burden and slaves of toil?”
“According to most calculations,” he warned, “we hit the frigging federal debt ceiling in May. If that doesn’t cause another shutdown, there’s always the 2012 budget instead. So there will be ample opportunities to collect the statistics, without which, no one can currently answer that question. But my guess is – frigging plenty of them, brother Tom, frigging plenty.”
“Hold that thought,” I whispered as I rose to summon Cerise to replace me. There obviously was, I concluded, nothing more that I could do for the poor wretch.
After I explained my experience to her, Cerise went over to Cuthbert’s table and spent nearly half an hour with him. I have no idea of what that conversation consisted, but when she returned, I could readily see that she, at least, was satisfied with its outcome.
“What,” I asked her, “in your considered opinion, is poor Cuthbert’s major malfunction?”
“The same thing,” she replied, “that’s got all the other federal government bozos scared out of their wits about a shutdown.”
“Which,” I doggedly pursued, “would be what?”
“What Cuthbert’s really scared of,” she revealed, “what, as a matter of fact, they’re all actually completely terrified about, is that if there’s a federal government shutdown, and they don’t come in to work for several weeks, and it doesn’t make any difference…”
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed, “and then, somebody notices it didn’t…”
“Right,” she affirmed, “then they’re officially SOL and ripe for a RIF.”
“Well,” I sighed, “in that case, no wonder the poor SOB is totally FUBAR.”