Washington, D.C.: New Beginnings and a Shutdown

Wilson and I have been on the East Coast: D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and NYC for the past sixteen days and it has been fun! But it has also been a strange time to be in the D.C. area -- when the federal government has shutdown for the first time in 17 years. We arrived on Monday September 30th to watch the news about what would happen the next day on October 1st. We were anxious for a lot of reasons. In the immediate term, we didn't know whether Wilson would be able take the last substantive step in the Foreign Service process. In the long term, we didn't know how the shutdown would affect many of our friends who work for the federal government -- Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Deparatment of Defense, and Senate staffers. Also, we were worried about what this government shutdown meant for our country's economic and governance health. Thr energy flowing through the city felt like the antipode to another time that we came to D.C. almost 5 years ago -- President Obama's initial inauguration.

This time in D.C. -- there has been a lot of talk about government dysfunction and what the U.S. is doing wrong. How politicians are so scared of being "primaried" like Bob Bennet to Mike Lee in Utah, that they are just looking out for themselves rather than looking out for what is best for the country. That food stamps, WIC benefits and health bills seem to be games. That many politicians don't seem to care that real people in the U.S are going hungry and that real people in the U.S. are losing every last penny to health care costs that have been out of control for the last few decades. That President Obama really did hear, and hate, his mother fighting with insurance companies over health bills during the last few months of her life. Pessimism and anxiety felt real in Washington these past few weeks even though many programs in the government were able to find a way to continue. But some programs weren't.
I know that there are cogent arguments for a leaner federal government -- it should be trimmer but trying to "trim" government through crisis methods and late night bargaining is not likely to yield the best results for U.S. government's multi-trillion dollar budget. Best results have to be well-thought out and negotiated rationally. Best results are what we all should seek and I think that better results are possible. I have to believe in the hope that President Obama's election in 2008 stood for. The hope that: "The forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."
I hope that with yesterday's deal to get the government back up and running that we can find a way to make government more efficient while not losing sight of taking care of our fellow American citizens. The pictures in this blog post from January 2009 were of a time when people were literally dancing in the streets. Our friends are pictured below, bundled at 4 am, to brave the freezing cold to be out in the 2 million people strong throng to celebrate a truly historic moment in our nation's history.

I was glad to share in that time in D.C. and hope that these past few weeks will be the nadir -- a turning point towards a more cooperative and efficent government.

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