Prediction -- What Will End The Shutdown
Currently, most Americans seem to be largely carrying on as normal during the Federal government shutdown. I know I am able to pretty much completely ignore it. Looking at front pages of sites like the WSJ and CNN, stories on the shutdown are still there but are certainly not the lead, center pieces. This is the government employee's nightmare, where they effectively go on strike and no one notices.
So where will enough public pain come from to force concessions on one or the other party in Congress? The game used to be closing high visibility public parks to tick the citizens off, but a lot of parks are still open today under private management (I know, my company operates hundreds of them). Want to see the volcano erupting in Hawaii? The Volcano House we operate in the National Park is still open.
My new hypothesis came from my wife, who was worrying the other day whether we would be able to make some critical flights in early November. I initially scoffed, but thinking about it more, I think the TSA and more particularly the FAA may be the key to this shutdown. Already this year, antiquated systems from years of government mal-investment combined with understaffing and poor training have led to manpower shortages and sick-outs in certain locations, particularly Newark. Now, the FAA is apparently working unpaid. If they were walking out when they were being paid, things can only get worse with them not being paid. I can easily imagine rising flight cancellations that will get great play in the media -- TV news is very experienced at showing masses of people camped out at the airport due to cancelled flights and interviewing people with heartbreaking stories about weddings and such missed. Three or four days of that kind of mess leading the news each night and the R's and D's will quickly find some sort of accommodation.
This is all ironic, and somewhat infuriating to this libertarian, as the FAA and TSA should have been privatized years ago, and such privatization works just fine in Canada. This issue of privatizing the FAA actually came up last April during the bad Newark slowdowns but the Trump Administration passed on the opportunity. If the FAA is the entity that generates the most pain in the shutdown, these discussions might get restarted.