In the Wreckage of an Almost-Shutdown
Today, a lot of us are taking a slightly ragged breath and relaxing a bit. Last night, around 11PM, a deal was reached that would extend for a week the operations of government as we know it. This is particularly meaningful for all of our servicemembers, many serving in harm’s way, who had already opened up Mypay to reveal a LES with only half the pay anticipated for it. This will allow them to get their midmonth pay.
Let me stress, for those few who might happen to be unaware, that unlike the rest of the government, when the military isn’t getting paid, the military is still working. People don’t stop trying to kill them just because they’re not getting paid. Instead, it’s just another worry on their mind, preventing them from being fully focused on the dangers surrounding them, because they’re too busy wondering if their family will be able to pay the rent or buy groceries.
I’d like to take a moment to thank those organizations that went above and beyond in order to make sure servicemembers didn’t have to worry about where their family’s next meal would come from: such as the Navy Federal Credit Union, that promised all servicemember’s mid-month checks would be covered by the institution. I’d also like to thank (and this is rare) the VA (or as Brandon Friedman likes to remind everyone, Veterans Affairs) for putting out a Veterans Guide to the Shutdown, to help address the justified concerns many veterans had about whether their disability checks and education benefits would arrive on the 1st.
However, what really needs to be addressed is not so pretty: why did it come so close in the first place? A lot of people in both political parties want to blame the other party. But really, both parties are to blame, and both parties gambled way too much with the lives of people who have already given up a lot to serve their country.
The one bare-minimum standard any governmental body that deals with money has is to pass a budget for the next year. But nobody wanted to pass a budget before the elections, because then they’d have to deal with possible consequences for their votes. And after the elections, when Democrats realized that they were going to be out of power next year, they hurried with pushing through the healthcare reform, instead of worrying about doing their job and passing the budget.
But the Republicans aren’t off the hook yet. Passing a budget was their job, too, and they chose to focus on ideological battles also. They decided to play a game of brinksmanship to show how tough they were for the next budget fight, ignoring the people it was going to impact. They tried to create a temporary bill that supposedly would fund the Pentagon all year, and the rest of government a week, to save the military, but then again added ideological riders on it.
Why do we put up with this? People on both sides, why do we act as though our party protects veterans and servicemembers? I think we need to acknowledge that both sides use us for photo ops and for talking points on the halls of Congress, but when it comes down to it, they don’t really care.
Category: Breaking News, Congress sucks, Disposable Warriors, Economy, Health Care debate, Military issues, Politics, Veterans Issues, Veterans' Affairs Department
Dang AS… When yer right, yer right; if a bit verbose [grin].
Your communist masters will be displeased.
Pelosi, Reid and Teleprompter Jebus had this within their power to address from 11 months ago up until 3 months ago, and yet somehow the charges of brinkmanship are Republican’s fault? I call bullshit. If Democrats hadn’t been fucking around with DADT and other social experimentation, this would have been a non-starter.
“But the Republicans aren’t off the hook yet. Passing a budget was their job” Wrong. Once the Republicans took the House away from the Dems and took away the Dems supermajority in the Senate a budget deal got done. No, the blame for this farce lies entirly on the shoulders of the Dems.
Frankly, the whole thing was bullshit. $30 billion in “cuts” in a $4.6 TRILLION budget?
For those too lazy to do the math, that comes out to about 0.7 percent.
Or, let’s put it another way. I am a private citizen. I have an income of $60,000, but my expenditures are $100,000, meaning I’m borrowing 40 percent of what I spend–kind of like what the current government is doing, only I don’t have a printing press or the ability to issue bonds.
So what the government did, I could accomplish the same thing in my “$100K budget” by cutting a whopping $70. A tank of fucking gas. And I’m still running a deficit of 39.93 percent rather than 40 percent.
We are so fucking screwed.
Excuse me—0.07 percent, not 0.7 percent.
Seems to me AS covered the situation well folks. TSO’s comment has some small merit… we should ALWAYS consider the source, but…
The congresscritters certainly gave rise to this issue – to be sure! And the current solution will be haunting us for some time.
TSO: So you’re saying it’s Tuesday, eh? 🙂
Claymore: Sure, you’re right. The Dems dropped the ball on creating the budget. But at the same time, it should have been priority one when the Republicans took over, and they shouldn’t have tried to thumb their nose with the ideological stuff. I understand why you’re upset-there’s been a lot of talking about how it’s /just/ their fault for that stuff. But I think we all need to acknowledge there are no angels here.
NHSparky: You’re right, but no one wants to tackle the sacred cows.
The whole fricking lot of them are cowards, because they wouldn’t put their duty ahead of keeping their jobs.
I understand why you’re upset-there’s been a lot of talking about how it’s /just/ their fault for that stuff. But I think we all need to acknowledge there are no angels here.
You could fit the genuinely honorable congressional members into a single row boat, on that there is no doubt, however let’s don’t mince words: if you’re looking for the gang who counts among their supporters the very designers and architects of our nation’s demise, the vast majority of them don’t have the letter R behind their name. For Jebus to stand in front of cameras and proclaim “painful cuts” have been made, one can only imagine he’s referring to some mishap he had while lacing up his fucking golf shoes.
Ideological? Cutting budgets to programs that don’t need the money and aren’t needed isn’t “ideological.” It’s cutting waste to cut Federal money to Planned Parenthood, as Obamacare covers ALL Americans, right? Isn’t that what they told us? Isn’t that why they passed it? Planned Parenthood doesn’t give mammograms. It provides abortions, and hence legally, it cannot be funded with Federal tax dollars. NPR is not what it has claimed. It’s somewhat partisan, but with programming that purports communist ideals (“Democracy Now”) and certainly argues against American Ideals, it is long past time to ween the leech from the government teet. There are enough radio stations and tv stations in America now. There is no longer a need for a government funded version of either. Cut the funds and let it survive or fail on its own merits, on base capitalist market principles. ((Don’t worry, George Soros will fund it.)) No, I don’t trust either party, but as already stated, the 2011 budget should have been passed NLT 30 Sep 2010. The DNC Supermajority kicked that can down the road several times. They have primary responsibility for the lack of a budget. The 2012 should start with the 2008 budget as a base. From there, they can cut. All here should recall, it was the largest deficit on record, at the time. 2009 and 2010 tripled that record deficit, each year. So, this year they trimmed less than 1% off the 200% increase in the deficit. I want to see a full item by item review of every detail in the budget. Beside each line, I want cited specifically the paragraph of the Constitution that authorizes it, with none of that “general welfare of the Nation” abuse BS. I want to see the 10th Amendment upheld. And any budgetary item that sends money to municipalities, counties, state, or any other form of government can be stricken from the budget. Those governments have their own power to tax. If their citizens want laws or new equipment, they can elect politicians that will tax them for it. The reason why the US Constitution… Read more »
“And after the elections, when Democrats realized that they were going to be out of power next year, they hurried with pushing through the healthcare reform,”. One small nit to pick, are you saying that Healthcare was passed after the D’s lost the last election? That’s why they didn’t pass a budget?
I think if you’ll check, so-called Healthcare Reform was passed, and signed by the OiC on March 23, 2010. That would place it about 7 1/2 months before the elections.
And, the dems owned the government up until January of this year, they could have passed a budget any day they chose. It’s not like they would have invited any R’s, aside from Olympia Snooze and Susan (tom)Collins to chat with them, they didn’t bother to pay any attention to anyone who wasn’t a “progressive”, right up until they lost the election. They spent two years not talking to R’s.
And, you’ve never heard of a D attaching a rider to defense budget?
Well done, Sarge. I tend to agree with TSO….:) Anyhow, the dem’s should have passed their budgets when they were in power. Twice but for some odd reason, I get the feeling (my spidey sense kicking in) they knew their gig was up before anyone else did and passed the buck.
TN: I’d completely agree with you if they were making deep, broad-spectrum budget cuts in the places they needed to be made. There’s an awful lot of waste in government that wasn’t cut. As one previous poster wrote, this is just a drop in the bucket. And specifically, there was no reason to tie the temporary stopgap measure to extend for a week and fund the Pentagon for a full year, to abortion issues. We needed to get our soldiers secure in being fed and clothed more than that specific cut needed to be made.
UpNorth: Good catch! In that case, I have no idea what was holding them up. I wasn’t allowing the healthcare thing as an excuse, mind, it just makes it more incomprehensible fuck-up-ittude.
I have heard of Dems attaching riders to defense budgets, and I think it’s equally ridiculous and awful. You have to understand, I’m an equal-opportunity hater. I think most of Congress is full of decay.
The budget deal can be compared to a bucket full of holes under a pump’s spout. The water going in is the tax money coming into the Federal treasury. The holes are the many expenditures of the Federal government.
At one time the bucket was kept at a certain level with a few holes in it. As time went on, and politicians kept wanting more of your money, more holes were poked into the bucket. As more time went on, and politicians wanted more of your money, they increased the size of some of the holes AND poked more holes into the bucket.
The water level kept getting lower in the bucket, so the pump had to work harder to get the water. As time went on, the water level in the ground dropped enough that the pump could only supply so much water, so the politicians put more and bigger holes in the bucket.
The politicians decided they had to cut the flow of water coming out of the bucket, so they plugged ONE of the holes. The water going out was still more than the water going in, and the water level in the bucket was still going down fast, but they figured they could punch more holes in the bucket later on to take care of that problem.
This is the logic behind today’s politicians, democrat and republican. This is also one reason I don’t belong to a political party. There are no republicans or democrats any more, only republicrats, because they all have merged together into the same feeding frenzy like sharks eating a whale. The whale is almost gone.
I want ALL of the republicrats out of office and non-politicians replacing them.
We needed to get our soldiers secure in being fed and clothed more than that specific cut needed to be made.
—–
You know, I don’t seem to recall a post like this being made when the Democrats were fucking around not passing a budget, but instead focusing on repealing DADT. Back then, repealing DADT was priority one, forget the budget! We didn’t get whining from the likes of the Army Sergeants of the Left regarding “thumb[ing] their nose with the ideological stuff”.
“Equal-opportunity hater”, my ass.
The Left had no problem when the Democrats were dicking around for a year not passing a budget and then focusing on DADT repeal. And now when the GOP is trying to clean up their mess, it’s the GOP’s fault for being “ideological”. Brilliant.
I disagree with AS on who was responsible for the near shutdown, but one thing is sure-most troops blame politicians in general. The real damage that was done here was to the morale of the troops.
Anybody notice that MyPay has been down since Friday afternoon? That’s how many people are still trying to check their pay.
AS: There are plenty of quotes from Dem Leadership incl. Schumer, Dean, et.al. indicating their desire to shut down the govt.
What logjammed their plan to shutdown the govt while spouting bs about “extremist Tea Party” elements? Oh yeah, it was that the Reps came up with the fund the DoD for the rest of the year bill.
“If I were king,” every piece of legislation would be restricted to solely the subject of that resolution. NO funding of solar panels, planned parenthood, and African penis cleanliness research at a favored university on DoD Budgets. But I’m not king. Politicians of all stripes create HR’s and SR’s that have little to do with what they claim to and throw in all kinds of stuff to force the other side to vote with them or against them.
The Reps have the 2012 budget to propose those deep broad based cuts you want. A good place to start is with the Treasury Dept, which quadrupled in size since the last POTUS.
A 75% cut from the 400% increase would put it back to where it was.
Cutting 30, 40, or 80 Billion this year is like putting a piece of plastic on a sucking chest wound. It’s better than doing nothing, but it’s not going to save the patient. It’s time to call the medevac and get the patient under the knife, and that means deep cuts in the 2012 budget, using the 2008 budget as a baseline. In other words, cut every increase since 2008, and then begin making cuts.
Afterall, O promised to cut the deficit in half. He needs to cut away half from the 2008 levels, not his hyperinflated 2009 level. And he hasn’t even started to approach the later yet.
Cutting 30, 40, or 80 Billion this year is like putting a piece of plastic on a sucking chest wound. It’s better than doing nothing, but it’s not going to save the patient. It’s time to call the medevac and get the patient under the knife, and that means deep cuts in the 2012 budget, using the 2008 budget as a baseline. In other words, cut every increase since 2008, and then begin making cuts.
—–
Yeah, and it doesn’t help that the President, Democrats and MF-ing media are LYING — as usual — about “the biggest cuts in history!!!”. There have been NO cuts. Period.
Obama and the Democrats have increased spending in 2009 and 2010 and in the proposed budgets for 2011 and 2012. This $38bil was not a cut, it was simply a lessening of the increase in spending. It’s like a wife telling her husband she’s going to spend $500 on a dress and shoes, then coming home and saying she saved money, because she found a sale where she got everything for ‘only’ $450. That didn’t save the family diddly squat. It *cost* the family $450.
But the Democrats pull this shit all the time. When the Democrats want an increase in spending of $100bil from $100bil to $200bil, the Republicans then say, no only an increase of $50bil from $100bil to $150bil. Then the Democrats go out there and accuse the Republicans of “draconian cuts!”, “they’ll killing babies and women and the poor and the elderly!” blah blah f-ing blah. Meanwhile, THERE WERE NO CUTS. INCREASING a budget from $100bil to $150bil is NOT A MF-ING CUT, it’s an INCREASE of $50bil. Yet, the Democrats and the Left call it a cut.
It’s a bunch of MF-ing bullshit. And I’m sick of these lying scumbags getting away with it.
I’m also sick of the GOP not having the balls nor the spines to call the Democrats out on their bullshit.
Just to shake the tree a bit and get everyone angry at me, you know what? It’s not the congress critters fault, any of them.
It’s our fault, we’re the ones who put them there, we’re the ones who use the product they’re selling. We all like to think our answers are correct, but aside from those who have actually run for office and tried to affect actual improvement, in our home communities first, what has 90% of the population ever done to be responsible for the country’s course?
They are us.
They are us.
—–
100% agreed, Jacobite. Which is why my anger is no longer towards Democrats or Republicans, but towards the ignorant tools who keep voting for liberals (whether they be Democrats or Republicans) and then turn around and whine when they ruin the country.
The people who bitched about Bush and the GOP running up huge deficits and spending too much during 2001-2008 are now the same people who are (1) praising Obama and the Democrats quadrupling those deficits and spending and (2) bitching about the GOP trying to save this country from financial disaster.
So, yeah, when you have millions of people with that much of an utter lack of integrity and common sense, we’re going to get the government we deserve.
“when you have millions of people with that much of an utter lack of integrity and common sense, we’re going to get the government we deserve”
Exactly. And you know what? There’s tens of millions out there who would be utterly stunned to discover how little integrity they actually possess.
I would like to point out that deciding who gets paid and who doesn’t durring a shutdown is entirely the perview of the executive branch.
Since Obama is 100% Democrat he gets 100% of the blame.
I cannot agree regarding the Republican culpability in the budget crisis. They are just now in control of the House, and before that they were in the minority in both House and Senate. There was nothing they could have done about passing a budget, with the demcong not even allowing them to participate in the process in some areas.
Also, the areas they were wanting to cut were perfectly legitimate, but they infringed upon the core constituency of the demcong. An example: Cut funding to the babykilling Planned Parenthood and all those sperm gurgling cum dumpsters will not be able to get their free abortions. This is almost 90 percent of what they do. But why am I paying for the chickies to get free abortions? Let them pay for their own. No one was saying P.P could not continue to exist, only that the taxpayers should not have to fund what is clearly a special interest group. The demcong had three or four of these special interests that they would not budge on, no matter that these were legitimate cuts, and they were willing to screw over absolutely EVERYONE to keep them in business with OUR MONEY.
I am still watching the republicans, because I expect certain adult behavior from them. The demcong on the other hand, have shown how consistent they are in their lack of concern for the people they ostensibly represent. With them it is Dems first, and America a distant second in loyalties.