OC Register - Rep. Campbell: Government Shutdown Would Cause 'A lot of Disruption'

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By Matthew Fleming

We sat down with Rep. John Campbell, R-Irvine, on Thursday in his Capitol Hill office to discuss the intensifying battle over funding the government beyond its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, and the coming fight over raising the government's debt ceiling. Campbell is a member of the House Budget Committee and the Financial Services Committee. Sequester refers to the automatic budget cuts agreed to as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Q. What's the latest on the fiscal fights?

A. (Friday), we should be voting on this continuing resolution that would fund the government until Dec. 15, at the sequester levels, and defund Obamacare permanently. It sounds like it has plenty of votes to pass. It's likely to be a party-line vote.

Then it goes to the Senate. They probably won't vote on it until Saturday the 28th, and then (the House) will get something back. Then we'll either pass what they send us back or we'll start to ping-pong, where we change something and send it back (to the Senate) and they'll change it and send it back. So we'll see. It looks like it will go right near the (Sept. 30) deadline.

Then the next thing will be the debt limit. We think most of October will be arranged around the debt limit. We're looking at passing a one-year debt limit extension with a one-year delay of Obamacare (implementation)."

Q. What's the difference between defunding Obamacare and delaying it?

A. Defunding would obviously take money away from the administration and the enforcement of Obamacare, but it wouldn't change the law. So the mandates would all still be in place, the taxes, etc. If you delay it for a year, in theory, you would delay the entire law, the taxes, the mandates, everything, for a year. … The defunding is certainly our position going into the continuing resolution debate.

Q. What about the debt limit debate?

A. The debt limit is different; sequester will be in play there. As much as (Republicans) hate Obamacare, Democrats hate sequester. So, there's an obvious deal there: Trade sequester for Obamacare.

But I don't think it can possibly be that simple. We'll also throw in the Keystone (XL pipeline) policy and other policy issues that we think will raise revenue and help the economy. But the debt-limit debate will go through October and early November and if we do have a continuing resolution that goes until Dec. 15, then we still have to fund the government for the rest of the year, and that would take some kind of omnibus or minibus bill, and that would be the December debate. That would take care of things until after the (November 2014) election, well, depending on how long the [extensions] go."

Q. If a continuing resolution is not approved in time, and the government shuts down, how harmful would that be?

A. At that point, people that work for the government, whether that's the military and the FBI, or the Department of Education, could arrive on Tuesday, Oct. 1 and, "We can't pay you, so don't come in.' Even if that happens for a few days, it causes a lot of disruption. It's not something you want to do; it's something you want to avoid. What it does do is focus attention. This is a little bit of a game of chicken, when you do this. It's not unlike a business negotiation, or a family negotiation, where if we don't agree, everybody loses -- but people still fight in a negotiation right to the last minute and right to the last hour. And yes, it's not a good thing.

Q. What about a government default if the debt ceiling isn't raised? How harmful would that be?

A. Nearly 25 cents of every dollar spent by the federal government is borrowed. So, (if the debt limit isn't raised), on the certain date, the government would have to cut its spending by approximately 25 percent, pretty much overnight.

How that gets cut is determined by the White House, so he can decide, I'm going to fund the EPA completely, but I'm going to cut military pay. Tom McClintock introduced a bill that prioritizes these things. Under that, the first thing we would do is pay the debt, the second thing we would do is pay the military, and the third thing we would do is pay law enforcement. Everything else would be cut by a bigger percentage. Neither of these are good things, either going past the debt limit -- they say defaulting on the debt, but you don't have to default, so it's a bad term, it's inaccurate -- but going past the debt limit where you can no longer borrow money when we're spending the way we are, or to have a government shutdown by not funding, those are both bad things that will have negative consequences to real people in everyday life and to the economy.

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