Federal Shutdown

The federal government shut down [for a week]. The only category spared the financial ax during this period was “essential” services. That included Social Security payments, welfare, etc. Not surprisingly, a little-known “essential” service was Congress’ paycheck.

The Republicans and Democrats have embroiled themselves in the worst party bickering and catcall blabbering. They obviously were not doing their jobs effectively, yet they got paid. Why? In the private sector, if two co-workers were unable to accomplish a required task due to disagreements, consider what would happen.

ROBERT MARTIN

Pasadena

There is nothing like a crisis to bring interesting items of information to the surface. We were informed that, due to the shutdown, 800,000 nonessential civil servants were laid off (Nov. 15). Nonessential? Why were nonessential employees being paid with people’s money?

JARBAS G. ROHWEDDER

Culver City

The overall level of government spending and the deficit are two of the most critical problems facing this country. Failure to bring them under control now will keep upward pressure on interest rates, create the prospect of confiscatory tax burdens for future generations just to service the accumulated debt and, perhaps most importantly, eventually make it impossible for the government to provide essential services and a civilized safety net for those most in need.

Candidate Bill Clinton advocated balancing the budget in five years. President Clinton has, at different times, advocated balancing the budget in 10, nine, eight and seven years. Now is the time for the President to show real leadership and join with Congress in committing to balancing the budget in seven years.

JIM FITZGERALD

La Jolla

Regarding Newt Gingrich’s assertion that he was “snubbed” by Clinton on the trip to the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Nov. 16):

It’s a shame that Speaker Gingrich is too much of a spoiled child to at least momentarily put aside his need for attention in order to honor greater issues of life and death. It’s astonishing that he used a perceived snub as a reason for sending “a tougher continuing resolution” to the President. In other words, he was willing to hold the entire government hostage because he felt his pride had been wounded.

RICK KRIZMAN

Studio City

I would not have had Gingrich sit in the back of the plane. I would have made him take another plane.

SAM STABIN

West Hollywood

While I was in college in the late 1960s, I supported a movement for the elimination of the U.S. government by any means necessary. It now appears that this was accomplished by those very officials that we elected.

MICHAEL P. LUTZ

Aliso Viejo

All members of Congress did in fact execute a true legal contract with America in January, 1995, when they swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution. The Republican-led Congress failed to meet its constitutional responsibility to submit appropriation bills by Oct. 1. Then they want us to believe President Clinton should sign on to their agenda in order to keep government working.

This is the same gang that spent the first 100 days constructing its sham “contract with America” based only on cynical public relations pulp.

TOM ARMOR

Los Angeles

Strange that Clinton and his associates, who pride themselves on being liberals, are, like hard-bitten mossbacks, negatively digging in their heels against any change in an aging status quo.

WILLIAM N. McNAIRN

Palos Verdes Estates

As the case of irresponsibility intensifies in Washington, the question arises, what do you do with a Congress that is becoming progressively irrational? In European democracies, when a parliament becomes incapable of performing its functions, the head of state dissolves it and calls for new elections. In the meantime, the government and the country continue to function in a normal manner.

In the United States we keep paying salaries to a dysfunctional part of the government and have to send home the functional ones, the federal workers. Something is wrong here. When Congress members become irrational en masse, they should be sent home to face the electorate and maybe the third branch of the government, the Supreme Court, should take over the responsibilities for governing until the new elections.

IHOR LYSYJ

West Hills