With the shutdown now less than 24 hours away, you’ll hear a lot of cries of “let’s suspend pay for Congress during this shutdown!”

In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes:

If we careen over a cliff on Friday and the American government shuts down, hard-working federal workers will stop getting paychecks, but the members of Congress responsible for the shutdown are expected to be paid as usual.
That’s partly because Congressional pay is not subject to the regular appropriations process, and partly because of Constitutional concerns. The Senate passed a bill proposed by Barbara Boxer of California that would suspend Congressional paychecks in any government shutdown, but the Republican-controlled House has blocked it. House Republicans approved a similar pay suspension, but it was embedded in legislation that has zero chance of becoming law.
The upshot is that federal workers who do important work for the public — cleaning up toxic waste, enrolling sick people into lifesaving medical trials, answering medical hot lines, running national parks, processing passport applications — risk being sent home and going unpaid. But members of Congress would continue to receive $174,000 a year. As the humorist Andy Borowitz wrote in a Twitter message: “That’s like eliminating the fire dept & sending checks to the arsonists.”

Note his passing allusion to “Constitutional concerns.” Satisfying as the idea may seem, suspending members’ pay would blatantly violate the most recent amendment, the 27th Amendment, which ensures that changes to lawmakers’ salaries cannot take effect until a new Congress convenes; the purpose of this is to prevent members from voting themselves a pay raise. (Of course, members can vote future Congresses a pay raise or reduction, knowing that most of them will be reelected.)

With characteristic hyperbole, Kristof declares:

Imagine how disastrous it would be if the Republicans shut down government for any length of time. Unpaid federal employees would cut back on shopping. Some would miss house payments. Family members might drop out of college. The I.R.S. might not be able to deliver some tax refunds. Small businesses would stop getting government loans. In sum, after the Democratic stimulus, we would have the Republican drag.

Really? Any length of time? Even if they reach a deal Saturday, with the government shut down a day or so, we’ll see all of those economic effects? Please. On Saturday morning you’ll see the Smithsonian closed and other inconvenient effects, but the good news is that because the shutdown takes effect midnight on a Friday, negotiators have at least 48 hours before there’s any real impact; most federal workers don’t work weekends normally.