The federal government might shut down and people are cheering.
Tea Partiers reportedly broke out into chants of "Shut it down!" during an Americans for Prosperity rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. And House Speaker John “Oompa Loompa” Boehner’s office is denying reports that members of his caucus cheered after he told them he was preparing for a government shutdown.
Boehner claimed at a White House meeting two days ago that he could secure the necessary votes for a budget continuation if Democrats were willing to increase spending cuts to $40 billion from the currently proposed $33 billion.
The government is going to run out of funds tomorrow and Republicans are holding out for seven billion dollars in spending reductions?
Let’s see. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans prevented as much as $300 billion from going into federal coffers each year. The U.S. Treasury estimates the total revenue loss from the tax cuts will come to $3.9 trillion over 10 years.
The unwinnable, endless war in Afghanistan has cost more than $393 billion to date. Yet even though military spending is the single largest discretionary spending item in the budget and there are blatant examples of Pentagon waste, fraud and abuse, Boehner and his ilk are insisting that the Pentagon be left alone.
Too bad. Seems like the Pentagon budget and the Bush tax cuts represent a lot of cost-cutting potential. (I’m not talking about reducing what we’re giving our soldiers in the field. I’m talking about bringing ‘em home.)
This shutdown could last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks. The Congressional Research Service found that shutdowns in the 1970s and 1980s ranged from three to 17 days. The most recent lasted 21 days, from mid-December 1995 to early January 1996.
A shutdown could freeze investigations by federal regulators, prevent members of the military from getting paid, and idle 800,000 of the 1.9 million civilian federal workers.
The processing of applications for social security benefits could be delayed and backlogs increased. The National Institutes of Health would not admit new patients to its research hospital or begin new clinical trials of drugs, devices and treatments. And the Federal Housing Administration, the largest insurer of mortgages in the world, could not make new loan guarantees for homebuyers.
National parks would be closed. (During previous government shutdowns in '95 and early '96, the National Park Service lost approximately seven million visitors when 368 sites were shuttered.) The National Archives, federal monuments and memorials, and the Smithsonian Institution’s museums would also be closed. An estimated 500,000 visitors could be turned away this weekend alone from the National Zoo and the major Smithsonian museums on the Mall.
And in the District of Columbia, around 14,000 of the city’s 35,000 workers would be furloughed, street sweeping and routine road repairs would be suspended, and trash wouldn’t be collected. From what I understand, there’s a whole lot of trash in Washington, DC.
At least we can all breathe a little easier knowing that the U.S. Postal Service is self-funded so we’ll still be able to send our money to the Internal Revenue Service to pay for congressional salaries.
I understand Blubbering Boehner told George Snuffleupagus on ABC News that there’s “no daylight” between the Tea Party and him when it comes to shutdown negotiations. “What they want is, they want us to cut spending,” he said. “They want us to deal with this crushing debt that’s going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There’s no daylight there.”
I strongly suggest you stop kissing Tea Party ass, Mr. Speaker. The Tea Partiers I’ve seen and heard are absolutely not qualified to help shape public policy. They really aren’t. I wouldn’t even let them babysit.
Quit playing politics and do your job, dude. Your imaginary mandate is long gone and people are rioting in the streets. Shut the government down and I’m afraid you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Sources: Talkingpointsmemo.com, Huffingtonpost.com, Politico.com, News.yahoo.com, New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Costofwar.com, Congressional Research Service
Nailed it! Thumbs up Patrick.
ReplyDeleteHello its noodles! Why does our government allow so many stupid things happen? :c
ReplyDeleteDepends on who you ask, Nikita. First, government isn’t one person or group or party; government is made up of competing factions and levels and entities with differing opinions on issues and on what issues are important and on how best to address the issues. What one person thinks is stupid is the best thing ever to someone else. So you have to pay attention and not believe everything you hear and support those politicians who you think share your opinions about things, and try to get others to support them too by talking and listening and compromising. There are no guarantees, and stupidity will never go away, but you’ve gotta do what you can do. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
ReplyDelete"So you have to pay attention and not believe everything you hear and support those politicians who you think share your opinions about things, and try to get others to support them too by talking and listening and compromising."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, what they say when they want your vote, and what they actually do are almost always different. Teabaggers are experts at this.
There is no one person on Earth with whom I am in agreement one hundred percent, for one hundred percent of the time. Not even my Dad. When you begin looking at potential candidates for office, it often seems like your voting choices are all about the lesser of "who cares?" but there are two corollaries to that:
ReplyDelete1) It's a Catch-22. We get whom we deserve, and we deserve the candidates we get by having such low expectations to begin with, and by the way we treat them once in office. Let's face it, the public sucks.
2) You, as a voter, have to pick the the issues most important to you, and find a candidate who isn't a deal-breaker on those things. Realize at once that no one will be your Prince or Princess Charming. Then you have to support your candidate for as long as he or she lives up to their end of the deal. If they bail on you, you can't be embarrassed for voting for them, you have to call them on it. Loudly.
We got the Teabaggers because people were angry at the financial bailouts and job offshoring, but the racists and the social conservatives hitched their wagons to the anger movement, fed it and profited by it. Even Teabaggers can't agree on what their guiding principals are, or who their leaders are, either. This isn't a legitimate, sustainable faction, because it has no focus other than hating Obama for what wasn't his fault in the first place.
Thanks for the feedback, I like hearing what other people say about important topics! I know I am just a kid, but I think it is important to know the facts about things happening outside of our daily lives so when stuff does happen you can stand up for what you believe in and stand for.
ReplyDelete