A government shutdown and not over cuts or more spending
Posted By RichC on January 21, 2018
We are dealing with a government shutdown once again. Our ineffective elected politicians in Washington DC can’t figure out how to work together in a way to even keep the federal government doors open for business … let alone do the actual work to improve the country without making someone suffer (those depending on a regular government check).
The way I see it is that the party in minority, Democrats, think they have found a way to slow the Trump administration’s progress by tying something additional they want to the short term funding bill 
– in this budget bill’s case it is an immigration issue called DACA that can easily be debated at another time, although without the clout of shutting down the government.
Consider that several previous shutdowns were blamed on Republicans, when they were in the minority, it will be interesting to see if Democrats face the same firestorm for doing the same? If memory serves correctly, previous shutdowns had more to do with excessive spending and too few budget cuts, which are fairly closely tied to monetary budgeting. This shutdown has little to do with monetary budgeting as only four fiscally conservative senators (Rs) opposed the continuing resolution and voted ‘no’ due to the excessive deficit spending. Although the Republicans are in the majority, they still need a 60 senators marging to keep paychecks flowing to federal workers (the House passed it).
So … I’m a little bit more peeved than usual because the debate does not seem to be over the actual budget, deficits or debt or even the programs that are currently funded. In this shutdown, both Republicans and Democrats seem to support existing social programs like the highlighted CHIP program (liberals favor), and the hefty national defense (conservatives tend to favor). Instead … the argument seems to be coming from Democrats, especially the senate leadership, that they need to leverage the passing of the continuing resolution in order to gain something that has little to do with funding the government. One would think the mainstream media and public would at least point this out?
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