Hamilton: Congress 'A Disease' In Handling Of Potential Shutdown

A former U.S. Rep. and Director of Indiana University’s Center on Congress says Congress is diseased in how it operates.

Lee Hamilton spent 34 years as a Democratic member of Congress, but calls how federal leaders are working now a disappointment.

"If in fact the government does shut down, it is a failure of leadership that is terribly disappointing," he said.  "It's reckless.  It is wasteful and it is certainly a dereliction of leadership."

Regardless of what happens, Hamilton insists the damage has already been done.

"The mere threatening of the shutdown is a very serious problem for our government," he said.  "If it shuts down, then of course the risks are very high that we could have adverse economic consequences very quickly and, of course, a lot of personal hardship throughout the country."

Those hardships would hit particularly close to home, says IU Indiana Business Research Center Director Jerry Conover.

"It would make a significant impact on Indiana, not to mention the nation as a whole, because we have about 20,000 federal employees in the state and that's not counting the postal service employees, " said Conover.  "That's a large chunk of money to pull out of the Indiana economy that would essentially ripple through all the other parts of the economy.  If there is that much less money circulating, demand will go down because people can't buy, they aren't getting paychecks, businesses will start laying folks off.  It's not a pretty sight."

Hamilton says the long term solution lies in the country re-establishing the political center. He says to do that, there needs to be greater voting turnout.

"This is not far from Hoosiers.  Their elected representatives are the ones causing the problems," he said.  "They are the ones not agreeing.  They are the ones not reaching an accommodation. They are the ones that are not finding a solution to this problem."

"It's ok to be a politician at election time, we expect that.  But, when you become a legislator you have a responsibility and that responsibility is to make the government work."