One of many questions that arises in contemplation of a pending and potential shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is the impact this would have on public opinion. The Senate and House are in recess at this point in time and won't have a full day together again until Feb. 25. The deadline for passing legislation that would fund the DHS is Feb. 27. The issue at stake is the Republicans' use of the funding of DHS as a mechanism for attempting to thwart President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration. Democrats argue that consideration of immigration should be separate from funding DHS. If the department is not funded, essential workers will most likely continue to work without pay, while many other administration employees will be furloughed.
This is the potential shutdown of a small portion of the federal government, rather than the entire government as happened in the fall of 2013. But the impact of the shutdown one and a half years ago provides some insights into the type of reaction it might engender from the average American.
Much of the speculation about the DHS shutdown -- as is inevitable in the highly partisan, not to say polarized, environment in which we live today -- is on its potential political fallout. This is certainly not to say that our elected representatives in Washington are as focused on their own and their party's political future as they are on the good of the nation as a whole, but it is fair to say that thoughts about the political implications have perhaps entered into their thinking.
We know from the previous shutdown that 1) the image of the Republican Party took more of a hit than did the image of the Democratic Party in the short term, and 2) the image of the Republican Party had rebounded by the next year and the Republicans went on to take control of the Senate and won seats in the House elections in November.
The short-term blame may well again go to the Republicans more than the Democrats in this situation as well. A recent poll conducted by CNN/ORC reported that the public would blame the Republicans in Congress more than President Obama for a DHS shutdown, by 53% to 30%. But the longer term trends from the 2013 shutdown suggest it is possible that the negative fallout could dissipate within months after the DHS is again funded and the crisis resolved.
So much for the political fallout. What about possible implications of a shutdown for other aspects of American society?
One of the most significant shifts in public opinion that occurred in 2013 was the major blow the shutdown inflicted on Americans' confidence in the U.S. economy. Gallup's Economic Confidence Index had been in negative territory ever since the 2008 recession, but edged back up almost to the breakeven point by the middle of 2013. Then came the lead-up to and the actual government shutdown beginning on Oct. 1, and from mid-September to mid-October, the Index cratered from -15 to -39, which was the lowest level registered since December 2011. Obviously, the shutdown had a devastating impact on Americans' confidence in the broader economy.
But, and this is significant, like the image of the Republican Party, economic confidence recovered as soon as the shutdown was over. In fact, confidence rose almost as rapidly as it had fallen, and by January 2014 the Economic Confidence Index was back at -13. Confidence leveled off at about that point for much of 2014, but began rising again last fall and in the week ending Feb. 16 was in positive territory, at +3.
That's not to say that the temporary drop in confidence didn't have short-term deleterious effects. In addition to the apparent deeply negative concerns Americans had about the economy that existed during the shutdown, there were direct economic costs. The White House put forth a document that listed all of the economic disruptions, including 120,000 lost private-sector jobs during the shutdown and $2 to $6 billion in lost output. A highly referenced Standard and Poor's estimate was that the shutdown took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy, although that amount has been disputed.
What about confidence in the institution of Congress itself? I would put this in the "already so low that it can't go much lower" category. Congressional job approval did, in fact, reach its all-time low of 9% in November 2013, the month after the shutdown, but that was a minor downtick from where it had been for years. In fact, congressional job approval didn't need a shutdown to reach 10% readings at two different months in 2012 and had been at 13% in March 2013, well before the lead up to the shutdown.
Congressional approval stayed low after the shutdown, averaging just 15% for all of 2014, just one percentage point higher than the yearly average for the year of the shutdown, 2013. More recently, approval has edged up to 20% in February, driven almost totally by a rise among Republicans, whose party now controls both houses of Congress. But these are all relatively minor fluctuations in a still dismally low rating that the American people give to the men and women they elect to represent them in Washington.
Americans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. dropped to 16% in October 2013 -- down from 23% in September, but recovered later in 2013 and stayed about where it had been for most of 2014. Now, it's up to 32% for the first two months of 2014.
The shutdown came amidst a generally rising percentage of Americans who said that the most important problem facing the nation was government itself. That percentage had been in the mid-teens in the months of 2013 prior to the shutdown, up from previous years where it had been somewhat lower. Then, in October 2013, mentions of government itself as the nation's top problem more than doubled from the month before, going from 16% to 33%. Almost as quickly, however, after the shutdown was resolved, the percentage of Americans mentioning dysfunctional government as a top problem dropped again into the teens, where it has been ever since -- although even at this level it often comes in at the top of the most important problem list. Certainly the shutdown reinforced Americans' views that government itself is the biggest problem facing the country, but was most likely not the precipitating event that caused this view to become more prevalent.
So the lessons from the previous shutdown seem to be that it had a short-term dramatic impact on Americans' views of the economy, and on the image of the Republican Party, but that these changes were not long term. Perhaps more importantly, the shutdown appeared to have reinforced Americans' already very negative views of Congress and government in general, and to this day dysfunctional government -- although mentioned less frequently than after the shutdown -- remains the top problem facing the nation in Americans' views. The most significant impact of a possible shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security at the end of February is therefore most likely not going to be bound up in the frenzied efforts on the part of politicians to pin the blame on the other party, a spectacle that inevitably will take place. Instead, the sad impact that matters most will likely be to underscore and deepen the profound cynicism and lack of confidence that the public already has in its elected leaders.