The length of the shutdown — 35 days — is also important, as federal employees try to catch up with assignments they missed during that time. The only benchmark for comparison was the 21-day shutdown from December 1995 to January 1996. Then, as now, contractors were especially hard hit; it can take weeks or months to get up and running again. Some of their losses were never recouped. But in 1995 and early 1996, the Federal Reserve made a cut to short-term interest rates, giving an extra lift to the economy once the shutdown ended. The tech bubble was also forming. The subsequent jump in financial markets was so powerful that it prompted Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman at the time, to worry openly about “irrational exuberance.”

No one is really worried about exuberance, rational or otherwise, right now. Government spending is playing out, the Fed has been sidelined and doesn’t have a lot of room to cut rates, global growth is slowing and political leaders at home and abroad are at one another’s throats. All that has raised the risk of a 2020 recession.

Before that happens, Congress and the president should do whatever they can to sustain economic growth, while we still have growth to sustain. I have been a fiscal hawk my entire professional career, and I don’t usually support deficits in times of prosperity. But there is a small window of opportunity for policymakers to act, while interest rates remain low and we have some wiggle room on taxes. Once a slowdown begins, tax revenues fall, automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance kick in, and the need for social services and short-term stimulus intensifies. Then, it may be more difficult to carry out the large-scale investments we need to fundamentally lift long-term growth.

For now, the United States can actually afford to pay for investments in its economy. The most important investment is human capital, such as education and training for workers, but spending for that is controlled primarily by state and local governments, not Washington. Federal policymakers do have the power to invest in repairing and upgrading infrastructure, paid for by gradual increases in taxes. This has the potential to increase productivity growth, stimulate more private investment, gain bipartisan support and connect, instead of further divide, rural and urban Americans.