Don't Call It a Shutdown: How the Crisis Could Still Come Back
to Bite Democrats  By saying the government is closed when most
of it actually isn't, good-government advocates risk undermining
the public's already meager faith in the state. Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters  Even as Congress slouches toward a budget
resolution, Democrats, moderate Republicans, and others who
believe government can be a force for good need to acknowledge a
communications risk: that calling this crisis of governance a
“government shutdown” has hurt that project. It doesn’t help to
say that the government is “shut down” when, for most of what
people think of as “the government,” it’s not.  After all, very
little of the government ever stopped operating. The Washington
Examiner’s Byron York, for example, found a source on the Senate
Budget Committee who estimated that, measured in dollars spent,
“83 percent of government operations will continue.” (And this
was before Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recalled 350,000
furloughed workers.)  So it