For all you dads out there who’ve been hitting the cocktail party circuit hard this past week with jokes about how “those guys on the Hill, they must’ve been drunk!!”, turns out, you were pretty spot on.

An intrepid bit of reporting last week from Buzzfeed indicates that, according to the anecdotal evidence of Capitol Hill bartenders, on the night of the actual vote to shut down the entire federal government, members of the House were sauced.

A bartender at Sonoma Wine Bar told the site, “There was at least three or four tables of members sitting around getting their buzz on before they decided to go shut the government down. It was a little disconcerting to see these guys on their third merlot before they go in.”

There are also plenty of reports of lower level staffers going on 12-hour benders in local bars while they’re out of a job indefinitely. Which is fine. No one can say they haven’t earned it. But actual members of congress rolling into a vote this important drunk on expensive, off-trend wine? Not the most inspiring thing we’ve heard about our nation’s democracy today. But then, hey. Everyone gets a little loose sometimes, right? And it’s not like the shutdown is actually affecting anyone in any kind of concrete way, other than freeing up time to get drunk and run up credit card bills, right? No, now seems like a totally sensible time for merlot.

Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.