Depending on how much news you ingest in any given week, you might be aware that the National Government was a little less than an hour away from shutting down.
What happened? Well, I can try and give you an interpretation from my own little arm chair parked in front of my living room TV. The new budget needed to be set. One side wanted to make cuts, and the other side didn't.
Democrats wanted to keep the spending as is and Republicans tried to get as many as 64Billion dollars in less spending for the next year. Neither side was willing to give in to the other side's demands and so a budget was not going to get set. Without a budget the government doesn't operate.
Spending has long been the means by which representatives on both sides of the isle get re-elected over an over again. But strangely enough, the American people wanted the budget balanced and and the debt to be chipped away at.
New members of Congress, especially the new Republicans, were voted into office because they said that they would stop spending. If they didn't get this done the people would get rid of them next time and eventually find someone they liked who could cut spending, or, in most cases of the past, get spending directed towards them.
This, read on the surface, would seem to be an argument that the system works and that the American people vote out the bed reps. What I am actually pointing out is that it has taken a state of financial emergency to get people involved and willing to vote out their long time, good time Charlie representatives.
It has taken 1.2 trillion dollars in debt, financial crisis, recession (an impending second one), and what seemed to be a dooms day clock on government operations before people are willing to get involved. The system is designed to stop these things from happening before we get to panic mode.
Yet, with a debt of over a trillion dollars, Congressmen and women afraid for their future in Congress debated over a few billion dollars in spending. Was it over the price or what would get cut.
House leader Rep. John Boehner would tell you that the areas getting cut have already been decided and the Democrats are stalling at the price tag. Democrat Senate leader Harry Reid would tell you that the amount of money had been decided on and it was completely about issues. Somebody was lying.
Regardless, this farce just showed a complete lack of caring for the taxpaying American. I know I have been on a bit of money kick recently, but I would like to know if any of these millionaires have ever actually balance a checkbook.
If government would have shut down, billions would have immediately been added to the debt, 800,000 government employees would not have jobs until it was resolved, and, for the sheer sake of fun, the active military members would not have gotten paid.
Does government need to stop spending and try and get the American government out of the red and in the black? Yes. Is 32 Billion in spending cuts going to do that? Not really. It would be like paying back five days of interest on a 10 year loan. So was this really the time to get this underway? Nope. Were Democrats scared this battle might end their careers? Probably.
Excess spending and loopholes stem from re-election. I do not know if term-limits would mean that we would make more than we spend in this country but they really couldn't hurt. The reason we have administrators in other businesses is because we like to keep our spending under control.
We came 55 minutes away Friday night. Let's see if we can reproduce the fun
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/us-budget-deal-avoids-shutdown-fight-ahead_535242.html
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