Bob Schwartz

Tag: shutdown

November 5, 2025

The House will reopen soon, the federal government maybe not

Elected Republicans are thinking a little bit more today about the consequences of their actions and strategies.

Republicans control the House and have shut it down for months. They believe this issue has been lost in the bigger issue of the entire shutdown of the federal government and the damage it is doing and the suffering it has caused. Which, according to them, is all the fault of the Democrats.

That changed today. In light of the election results yesterday, which the president takes personally, he has reversed the claim that Democrats are to blame for the shutdown. He now properly blames the shutdown on the Republicans.

It is easier to open the House. Speaker Johnson can do this in the time it takes to read this post. He may have to bear up under the seating of newly elected Democrat Adelita Grajalva, who would be the deciding vote on demanding release of the infamous Epstein Files. But there is now a concern that Republicans are vulnerable at the polls, and the indisputable charge that they alone are responsible for the House not working at all—can’t blame the Democrats for that—will get noticed. Even if voters aren’t asking questions now, they will.

It is harder to open and restart the federal government, even now that the president has endorsed doing it. The Democratic demand is that SNAP and the ACA subsidies must be assured by Congress in the budget bill. No matter what the Republicans say, voters are also noticing that keeping food from 42 million Americans and cheaper health insurance from millions more is the fault of the Republicans. But not spending money on hungry people and on the health of Americans is part of the current Republican plan. It’s a quandary for Republicans.

So the House will reopen soon, even if it means seating Congresswoman Grijalva, but ending the shutdown may take longer.

© 2025 Bob Schwartz

1 Comment
October 1, 2013

Patents: Just One More Shutdown Victim

Election Game

You have heard stories, but you may not be directly affected by the shutdown at the moment, or know anyone who is. The shutdown may end tomorrow, but it may go on for weeks, as the last one did in 1996.

You understand the human misery that begins today. But maybe you don’t realize the legitimate, non-controversial things that the federal government does—things that are actually required by the U.S. Constitution, which even the most radical and extreme government haters say they respect.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is one of those functions. It is an engine of innovation, which is one of those buzzwords that everyone across the political specturms like to throw around. How busy and important is the USPTO? Right now, there is a backlog of 1,000,000 patent applications in the pipeline

The USPTO site features this:

USPTO Operation Status

During the general government shutdown that began October 1, 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will remain open, using prior year reserve fee collections to operate as usual for approximately four weeks. We continue to assess our fee collections compared to our operating requirements to determine how long we will be able to operate in this capacity during a general government shutdown. We will provide an update as more definitive information becomes available.

Should we exhaust these reserve funds before the general government shutdown comes to an end, USPTO would shut down at that time, although a very small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other functions. (Should it become necessary for USPTO to shut down, details of the agency’s plan for an orderly shutdown are available on page 78 of the United States Department of Commerce’s shutdown plan, available here.)

Any new or updated public information related to USPTO operations during the government shutdown will be placed on this page.

The mentioned shutdown plan includes 87 pages and obviously took many hours to create and will take many more to execute.

While there, a search of the patent database found numerous political games (above). Unfortunately, there did not seem to be any patents for helping political extremists understand that government is not a game, and that the extraordinary founders of the nation who they claim to love never meant it to be one. Those founders believed in government, and could never imagine any representatives irresponsible enough to believe otherwise.

Leave a comment