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Good evening,

Another shutdown threat in Washington isn’t a glitch in the Matrix; it’s the operating system.

As Congress lurches from crisis to crisis while the national debt sails past $35 trillion, North Carolina offers ([link removed]) a telling contrast to Washington’s dysfunction.

Under state law, when lawmakers in Raleigh cannot agree on a new budget by July 1, the previous budget remains in effect until a new one is enacted. Teachers get paid. Troopers stay on patrol. Agencies don’t shutter to gain leverage. Governance continues, then debate proceeds.

This structure protects citizens from the reckless brinksmanship that has now paralyzed Washington.

Shutdowns are enormously costly. They furlough workers, delay disaster aid, squeeze military families, and rattle the economy.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has pledged ([link removed]) to restore regular budget order in Congress—passing spending bills through the committee process instead of lurching from crisis to crisis. That reform alone would restore predictability, transparency, and accountability, while ending the cycle of governing by deadline drama.

Worse, it never fixes the underlying problem: Washington spends more than it takes in, and fiscal debates become partisan fights that ignore the larger problem.

Lest we grow smug, the current standoff over Medicaid “rebase” funding shows how quickly budget brinksmanship can creep into Raleigh. The state legislature approved $600 million to fund Medicaid. While the House and Senate haggle over the final details, Governor Josh Stein is threatening to slash provider rates ([link removed]) .

A manufactured crisis like this mirrors the dysfunction of Washington: creating panic for leverage. It’s brinksmanship at the expense of patients and providers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Solutions include:
* Adopt an automatic continuing resolution at the federal level, as North Carolina effectively did. Keep government open at prior-year levels until a new budget is passed.
* Cap spending growth to something reality-based—population plus inflation—and prioritize core functions.
* Sunset programs and regulations on a schedule, so lawmakers must re-justify them.
* Stop using crises as bargaining chips. If a policy can’t command support without a cliff, it’s probably a bad policy.
* Return to regular budget order. Congress should debate, amend, and pass appropriations through the normal process—just as families, businesses, and state governments must plan ahead—rather than waiting for deadlines to manufacture crises.

Shutdowns are optional. Responsibility isn’t. Congress must abandon governing by crisis and embrace reforms that prioritize taxpayers and the nation’s financial future.

You can read more about the budget and fiscal responsibility here ([link removed]) , here ([link removed]) , and here ([link removed]) .

Esse quam videri,

Donald Bryson
CEO
John Locke Foundation

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More from Locke

1) 🥪🥪🥪 The politics of hunger ([link removed])
* USDA has halted its Household Food Security survey, which the Trump administration is arguing politicized data and fueled SNAP expansion despite largely flat hunger rates.
+ From 2019 to 2023, measured food insecurity rose about 3%, yet SNAP spending jumped 87%, suggesting that more welfare spending has not reduced hunger.
+ “Food insecurity” is defined broadly, often capturing anxiety about food budgets rather than actual hunger, which can inflate the problem and justify larger programs.
* Alternative data sources already exist, meaning the government spends money and time on redundant and highly politicized data collection.
+ Private sources include: Gallup polling; Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap (which provides granular, county-level estimates).
+ Other public sources include: Census Current Population Survey, BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, USDA food price and consumption datasets.
+ Additionally, government data collection carries privacy and security risks, with recent federal data breaches exposing the sensitive personal information of millions.
o As well as the temptation to abuse it for political gain or selective enforcement.
* This underscores a larger truth: Government transfer programs are ill-suited to solving the structural causes of hunger.
+ The real solutions lie in getting rid of barriers to affordable food, as outlined ([link removed]) in Locke’s Sowing Resilience study, such as:
o Lowering grocery costs by cutting tariffs and distortionary farm subsidies.
o Allowing agricultural innovation without heavy-handed regulation.
o Relieving household budgets by reducing taxes, red tape in housing, transportation burdens, and energy costs.
* Private charity, think tanks, and community organizations can adapt and respond more directly to local needs than federal bureaucracies.
+ By crowding out these networks with a one-size-fits-all safety net, Washington makes communities more dependent and less resilient.

You can get the full picture here ([link removed]) .

2) 🗺️🗺️🗺️ Will racial gerrymandering ruling open the door for a new congressional district? ([link removed])
* A federal court rejected plaintiffs’ racial gerrymandering claims in Pierce v. NC State Board of Elections, finding no Section 2 VRA violation in two northeastern NC state Senate districts.
+ The court held that the 2023 legislative maps did not diminish Black representation
o African-American legislators hold about 21.7% of seats, roughly matching their share of the population.
+ Plaintiffs met only one prong of the “Gingles test ([link removed]) ”, failing to show a compact majority-Black district could be drawn or that White bloc voting usually defeats Black-preferred candidates.
+ The court’s broader “Senate factors” analysis concluded politics, not race, explained voting patterns and map design.
+ With partisan gerrymandering claims largely nonjusticiable after Rucho v. Common Cause and Harper v. Hall, racial claims are the main remaining redistricting litigation route, but Pierce signals their limits in NC’s northeast.
* The ruling, combined with a 2024 US Supreme Court decision on South Carolina, may open the door to redrawing North Carolina’s First Congressional District to be more Republican-leaning, if legislators:
+ Keep the district compact and “reasonably configured” (avoid bizarre shapes/splits)...
+ … Avoid using racial data in map drawing, and…
+ Demonstrate partisanship, not race, as the predominant motive.
+ The current NC-01 is already relatively compact, and any redraw would likely require changes to the First, Third, and Thirteenth districts to maintain equal population.
* While they are under the hood, legislators should consider redistricting reform to ban the use of any political or racial data, and to more strictly follow traditional criteria such as compactness and keeping political communities whole.

You can read the full article here ([link removed]) .

3) 🗽🗽🗽 Government efforts to equalize income are unjustifie ([link removed]) d
* “The government should actively intervene to address income inequality” is a statement broadly accepted and promoted by progressives for decades.
+ The burden of proof is on those advocating government-forced income equalization.
+ And without demonstrating that actual injustice causes income differences, redistribution is unwarranted.
* Many income differences are benign and expected, not evidence of injustice, such as:
+ Lower-quintile households average 0.4 earners (64% with none) vs. 2.1 in the top quintile.
+ Incomes typically rise with age:
o AGI averages roughly $24k (ages 18–26) vs. $133k (55–65) per IRS data.
+ Median income is about 71% higher for bachelor’s vs. high school graduates.
+ Unadjusted comparisons also obscure real differences in living standards (e.g., rural vs. urban).
+ Hours worked, risk, shift timing, benefits mixes, and vocation choices naturally yield income variation.
* When differences are unjust, government policy is often the cause:
+ Welfare “poverty traps” create perverse incentives that suppress earnings.
+ Protectionism/corporate favoritism subsidizes the politically connected.
+ Monetary expansion erodes purchasing power, harming wage earners while inflating asset values for the wealthy.
* In such cases, the correction to the resulting unjust differences in income should be addressed by ending the intervention, not creating more interventions.
* Using government force to equalize incomes, absent proven injustice, can serve as an endless justification for ever-increasing government intervention into the economy.

You can read the full brief here ([link removed]) .

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