In early January, The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described the partial shutdown of the federal government as a “big, beautiful libertarian experiment.”
Without appropriations, many government programs have gone dormant. The Treasury is saving taxpayer dollars by failing to pay federal workers. Washington’s footprint on the nation’s economic landscape has been reduced significantly, even if temporarily.
For Boston College Law School associate professor Daniel Lyons, a visiting fellow at conservative D.C. think-tank AEI, there’s a more fundamental problem with the shutdown: Pruning the regulatory state.
