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Your A-to-Z Beltway Glossary to the Government Shutdown

by Reed Richardson

Since the next two weeks promises to be an unnecessary, yet non-stop roller coaster ride of breathless backroom scheming and superficial process reporting that mostly ignores the fundamental issues at hand, I humbly offer up a this guide to translating the often impenetrable Beltway machinations into plain English.

apology noun. Pronounced /hip-ˈok-rəh-see/

1. Considered a pejorative term by conservatives, possibly of French origin, this term is under no circumstances to be invoked no matter how much damage the GOP-driven government shutdown does to the economy and lives of Americans outside of Washington.

2. What should be shamed out of other people, preferably liberals or government workers, who bear no responsibility for the shutdown.

Example: a member of a Republican party that broadly dismisses the impact of a federal gov't shutdown publicly browbeats an apology out of an innocent park ranger who is merely complying with the GOP’s grand strategy.

Disambiguation: Not to be confused with the popular right-wing “non-apology apology.”

Benghazi proper noun. Pronounced /ˈlay-təst ˈout-rag/

1. Thoroughly investigated and debunked non-cover-up.

2. Conditioned response term Republicans in Washington use to signal the next phony Presidential scandal their base should be outraged about and the political press should be distracted by.

Example that demonstrates both in a news headline: “More personnel sent to WWII Memorial than Benghazi.”

Antecedents: Fast & Furious, IRS-gate, Solyndra, Apology Tour, Acorn, New Black Panther Party, No Birth Certificate, et al.

compromise noun. Pronounced /ˈDim-oh-cratz cayv/

1. What seven of 10 Tea Party Republicans oppose when it comes to the federal government shutdown, in contrast to 57 percent of Americans overall.

2. A good faith gesture that the press inevitably expects Democrats or the President to undertake just to prove that they are not as irrational or intransigent as Republicans.

For reference as to how this function in Washington politics, see this syllogism.

debt ceiling noun. Pronounced /ˈpay-eng owr bilz/

1. Yet another routine mechanism in the functioning of our federal government that has been hijacked by extremist Republicans who are willing to risk broad national and global consequences in service of their narrow ideological goals.

2. Popular way for slow-witted media members to demonstrate their innumeracy about the deficit and facility for misleading the public through bad analogies.

See egotistical below.

egotistical adjective. Pronounced /waaaaaaaaah/

1. Operative word to describe House Republicans’ self-aggrandizing hubris in threatening to not raise the debt ceiling by Oct. 17.

Example: “‘We’re not going to be disrespected,’ conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. ‘We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.’”

false equivalence noun. Pronounced /both sidz to blaym/s

1. Fundamental intellectual error embedded in much of the press’s coverage of the government shutdown.

2. Mistaken mindset not being made by the American public.

3. Term that can elicit a tetchy backlash from pundits who get called out for indulging in it during government shutdown debate.

gaffe noun. Pronounced /ˈtop ˈsto-ree/

1. A favorite type of process story among the Washington press corps.

2. Of little impact in the real world, safe to ignore 95% of the time.

3. Usually based on a willful or lazy misunderstanding of a politician’s remarks that misses the deeper context of a debate.

Example: Compare the media firestorm between Sen. Harry Reid elaborating on Sen. Charles Schumer’s objections to pitting one part of the government against another for funding: “Why would we want to do that?” versus the press’s abject silence over GOP Rep. Tom Cole’s almost identical remarks the very same day about the prospect of a quick bipartisan passage of clean CR that would end the government shutdown: “Why in the world would we do that?”

Grand Bargain proper noun. Pronounced /ˈGil-dəd aj/

1. Polite term used among Washington insiders to openly discuss gutting the federal government’s social safety net.

2. The irresistible, Holy Grail of centrist Beltway pundits.

3. Next gambit for Republicans to try to sucker Democrats into taking part-ownership of the GOP’s increasingly unpopular government shutdown.

4. Unnecessary solution to a problem that is decades away and becoming less critical as time goes on.

Common euphemism for: tax cuts for rich, means-testing, raising the eligibility age, self-defeating austerity.

Hastert Rule proper noun. Pronounced /my-ˈnor-ə-tee ruul/

1. Procedural constraint named for former Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert, who, legend has it, refused to bring bills to House floor that didn’t enjoy majority support within his party.

2. Shameless House leadership excuse readily swallowed by today’s Beltway media as to why a "clean" CR that enjoys broad bipartisan support doesn’t get brought up for a vote immediately.

3. A standard that does not even apply to the "clean" CR, based on the whip counts of the House Republicans who would ultimately vote in favor of it.

4. Something that even its namesake says “has never really existed.”

John Boehner proper noun. Pronounced /ˈdəd man ˈwok-eng/

1. Titular leader of the House Republican Caucus (cf. Ted Cruz).

2. Someone who the press must recognize cannot exert any actual leverage over Democrats in negotiations on the debt ceiling.

3. Someone who the press must recognize cannot exert any actual leverage over extremely conservative House Republicans on the government shutdown.

4. Someone who also enjoys bipartisan support as Worst Speaker Ever.

Keystone XL proper noun. Pronounced /ˈrəd ˈhare-eng /

1. Controversial pipeline included in a ridiculous right-wing wish list that Republicans have floated—among them defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rolling back environmental regulations, and limiting medical malpractice lawsuits—as potential rewards for not fecklessly wrecking the global economy.

2. Signal that any news story that seriously includes this term at part of the negotiations has bought into GOP spin.

Iemmings noun. Pronounced /ˈTee ˈPar-tee ˈCauk-əss/

1. GOP House colleague’s nickname for extreme House conservatives who are unwilling to accept the reality of Obamacare and, therefore, fund the federal government.

2. Caucus that aforementioned GOP House colleague subsequently joined just hours after his “lemmings” comments, when he too voted to include a delay to Obamacare as part of a Continuing Resolution.

Caution: Using it to describe House Republicans is now widely considered an insult to actual lemmings.

lead transitive verb. Pronounced /ˈleed/ variant /ˈleed-eng/

1. When any U.S. President bombs a foreign country without Congressional approval.

2. What President Obama has failed to do whenever Republicans choose to indulge a rump minority within their party who refuse any compromise.

3. Handy, catch-all criticism deployed by media pundits that allows them to avoid uncomfortable value judgments about the unprecedented intransigence of Congressional Republicans.

Moderate House Republicans proper noun. Pronounced /ˈwərth-les/

1. Mythical Congressional caucus that claims to be fed up with recalcitrant Tea Party extremists.

2. Rumored to number as many as 25 in the House, yet rarely, if ever, seen during roll call votes.

3. Favorite source of Beltway journalists during shutdown coverage.

3. Soon to be defense or business lobbyists.

Real-world synonyms: free lunch, unicorn, smart take from Fox News.

negotiating verb. Pronounced /nee-ˈgosh-ee-ate-eng/

1. The Washington political process by which Republicans stake out a position and then proceed to ask for more while Democrats are expected to continually accept less while chasing the GOP’s increasingly excessive demands, lest they get equal blame from the media for not compromising.

2. What the media must understand the purely obstructionist and merely politically craven elements of the Republican Party are doing, which is the root cause of the government shutdown and, until it is resolved, renders moot any broader debate between Republicans and Democrats.

Obamacare proper noun. Pronounced /nät ˈseen-gəl pay-ər/ (liberals); variant /ˈso-shul-izm/ (conservatives)

1. Political shorthand term for President Obama’s signature healthcare reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

2. Not a job-killer, or any of 14 other myths about the law.

3. A potential life-saving policy for millions of uninsured and insured Americans.

4. A policy so heinous to Congressional Republicans that, as of Tuesday, they shut down the federal government to try to stop it.

5. A policy so heinous to Congressional Republicans that, as of Wednesday, they had pretty much abandoned trying to stop it.

Disambiguation: Not to be confused with chimerical jargon like “Repeal and Replace.”

President Obama proper noun. Pronounced /diss-ə-ˈpoynt-mənt/ (liberals) /ˈKin-yən Yu-ˈsərp-ər/ (conservatives)

1. Our nation’s chief executive whose very presence in the White House, despite two convincing presidential election victories, is still considered illegitimate by roughly half of Republicans.

2. Someone so relentlessly and inaccurately demonized by Republicans that the quite popular policy provisions of the Affordable Care Act lose their luster when his name is attached to them.

real America noun. Pronounced /ˈray-sysm/

1. Dog-whistle term used by a subset of Republicans to stoke prejudices and fuel the fear of Obamacare as well as the need for a government shutdown.

See also xenophobia.

sequestration noun. Pronounced /see-kwə-ˈstra-shən/

1. An indiscriminate, self-defeating cost-cutting measure adopted during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that, for 2014, would fund the federal discretionary budget at $217 billion below the President’s plan.

2. “The first significant Tea Party victory,” according to House reactionary Rep. Tim Huelskamp in February 2013.

3. A spending level Democrats have effectively accepted in their calls for a “clean” Continuing Resolution to end the shutdown.

4. A budget reality willfully ignored by Republicans and most of the establishment media during the shutdown crisis.

Beltway antonyms: compromise, concession.

slimdown noun. Pronounced /prop-ə-ˈgan-də/

1. Absurdly transparent term that Fox News is using to replace the word “shutdown” in all its news coverage, to better sell the Republican Party’s unpopular message to its viewers.

See also death panels, government takeover of health care, homicide bomber, death tax, personalized Social Security accounts.

Ted Cruz proper noun. Pronounced /nar-sys-ˈsyst-ik jərk/

1. Junior senator from Texas.

2. De facto House Speaker.

3. Wants to defund Affordable Care Act.

4. Doesn’t understand Affordable Care Act.

5. Former Harvard Law student, current 2016 GOP Presidential candidate, and future talk radio star or president of right-wing thinktank.

Referenced in a sentence: “[Ted] Cruz said he would deliver the votes and he didn’t deliver any Democratic votes. He pushed House Republicans into traffic and wandered away.”

tone noun. Pronounced /ˈup-it-ee/

1. Often presented as the primary stumbling block to political comity, as if President Obama hasn’t done enough to assuage the aggrieved feelings of those in the minority who routinely blame him for single-handedly ruining the country.

2. A facile, superficial obsession among Beltway pundits who continually insist it matters as much, if not more than, the President’s actual policy arguments.

Example: “The Republican Party engineered this stalemate and is likely to shoulder most of the blame. That is, unless the Democratic Party matches the GOP on pettiness, stubbornness, and demagoguery.

Synonyms include: process, theatrics, optics, messaging.

wrong noun. Pronounced /whət-ˈevz/

1. Opposite of right, this otherwise unenviable intellectual position matters little in the Washington political context as long as one can maintain messaging discipline and legislative continuity.

2. An often obvious, yet frighteningly rare conclusion that objective reporters and learned op-ed columnists are professionally discouraged from drawing about the political issues they purport to have expertise on.

Beltway synonyms: critics say, some argue, we’ll have to leave it there.

xenophobia noun. Pronounced /keep owt/

1. Another reason the right-wing opposes the Affordable Care Act and is willing to shut down the government, because a popular myth—propagated by Republican Congressmen—is that the law somehow provides healthcare coverage for illegal immigrants.

zero-sum adjective. Pronounced /O-ˈbah-mah məst luz/

1. A spiteful, scorched-earth political outlook that has colored the Republican Party since President Obama's very first day in the White House and something that, to this day, the Beltway media is loath to openly acknowledge no matter how much evidence of it.

2. Defining legislative success in our democracy not by what one’s side can achieve through rallying a majority, but by what one's side can prevent the opposition from achieving by exploiting “a minority within a minority.”

Real-world synonyms: sabotaging governance, post-policy nihilism, Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson@gmail.com.

I’m on Twitter here—@reedfrich.

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