We all need a timeout

It is time for a moratorium on Federal government action. We should simply shut down the entire Federal government for at least two weeks, preferably a month. The minimum necessary administrative functions could go on in the Executive Branch but no new plans, proposals, programs, or regulations should come from them. Congress should take a recess: no hearings, no bills proposed, no nothing. Ideally the President, the Vice-President, everyone in the Administration, and everyone in Congress would stop talking to the press.

This would give everyone in the government a chance to calm down, stop thrashing about, listen to what people are saying, and think through exactly what it is they are all trying to accomplish. I’d like for the same moratorium to cover State and local governments and officials, too. Yes, there’s a lot that needs to be done but surely taking a month to chill can’t do any more harm than the last 62 days - or seven months - have done.

“When you are in trouble,” Abbess Catherine told herself, “think of a bird caught under a net; the more it struggles and makes a flutter, the more it gets enmeshed; if it is still and looks about for a hole, keeping its strength, it has a chance of escape.