Warren Buffet gave a solution years ago for ending the deficit and avoiding government shutdowns

Federal workers across the United States have been furloughed and many services they provide stopped as lawmakers on Capitol Hill came to an impasse over continuing funding for the government.

So, the federal government shut down Wednesday at midnight as Democrats try to get Republicans to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse deep cuts to Medicaid passed under the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ passed in July along party lines.

It’s another example of politicians playing a game of chicken, waiting for the other side to blink while the American public goes along for the ride but contending with the consequences.

However, what if there was a way to put the incentive on lawmakers to cooperate to get things done, where the repercussions of failing to do so would directly affect them where it hurts the most? Warren Buffet proposed such a plan over a decade ago.

Warren Buffets five-minute fix for Washington lawmakers’ intransigence

Fights between Republicans and Democrats over the budget and deficit always seem to have the United States racing for the cliff edge.

Normally for the former, most of the time both sides find a last-minute resolution, but there have been 20 shutdowns in the past half century lasting an average of eight days.

This shutdown is the first since the last and longest one, 35 days, that ended on 19 January 2019, instigated by then-45th US president Donald Trump, refusing to sign a funding bill because did not include money for his wall on the southern border.

Fights over raising the debt ceiling, on the other hand, typically get resolved before people start sweating bullets. But one in 2011 sent markets reeling.

While that event was unfolding Buffet sat down for an interview with Becky Quick from CNBC’s Squawk Box and told her that he could “end the deficit in five minutes.”

He said that “you really don’t have any business by playing Russian roulette to get your way in some other matter. We should be more grown up than that.”

At the time Republicans were refusing to raise the debt ceiling, “using it as a hostage” to extract budget cuts out of the Obama administration. But the Oracle of Omaha pointed out that the debt ceiling was raised seven times during the previous administration under the younger Bush.

GOP lawmakers were concerned that the US debt was getting out of control, but Buffet highlighted that after World War II it was 120% of GDP. Back then he noted that lawmakers were mature about bring it back down to earth.

“We just went about our business and people did it in a cooperative way, but they didn’t do it by sticking guns at each other’s heads,” he said.

In order to instill a little maturity in today’s lawmakers he suggested a solution, somewhat in jest, but not entirely.

“I could end the deficit in five minutes,” he started off. “You just pass a law that says that any time there’s a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”

“Now you got the incentive in the right place, right? So, it’s capable of being done,” he continued with a laugh. “And they’re trying to use the incentive now that we’re going to blow your brains out America, in terms of your debt worthiness over time and that’s being used as a threat.”

“A more effective threat would be just to say, ‘If you guys can’t get it done, we’ll get some other guys to get it done,’” he concluded.

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