Agree, Wholeheartedly
HelLO, big mouth idiots ~ we don’t HAVE both houses of Congress yet, remember? Screw the pooch NOW and we NEVER will. (THEN what, geniuses?)
Could We All Please Stop Shooting at the Speaker?
The WSJ makes sense:
House Republican leaders and the White House are nearing a deal to finally close the books on the 2011 budget—six months into the fiscal year. The White House says it will accept spending cuts of $33 billion, compared to the $62 billion the House passed earlier this year. If House Speaker John Boehner can bring that number closer to $40 billion, so much the better.
We share the desire of new Members in Congress who want deeper reductions. But Republicans don’t hold the Senate or the White House, and even cuts of this magnitude are bigger than anyone could have expected last December. Republicans and tea partiers should pocket the victory and move on to the bigger fights over the 2012 budget and debt ceiling.
EXactly.
Get this Democratic budgetary “turd sandwich” of the way and go nuclear on 2012’s.
I saw some moron yesterday saying there’d been X amount of government shutdowns since, like, 1935 or something, for durations of 3 to 21 days and they’d been “no big deal”, the implication being this is water off a duck’s back in this case as well. Not so. This is the first time they’re talking about a shutdown without funding already in place to tide departments through with essential personnel. There’s NO MONEY.
…There was an emphasis on how a shutdown now would be much different than the shutdowns of 1995-96, when some departments and agencies were already funded and were unaffected. Unlike 1995, Congress has not appropriated money for any part of the federal government beyond April 8…
ZIP.
We all got paid during Newt’s temper tantrum. Do you know what I saw on my Congressman’s Face Book page the other day?
The following was in an article in the Army Times:
New draft guidance from the Defense Department indicates that Pentagon leaders are prepared to order troops and essential civilian workers to report to work without pay if there is a lapse in federal funding that forces a government shutdown.
Do you have more information about this? Tha…nk YouSee More
Jeff Miller As I understand it the memo is still a draft and has not been issued, but in the event of a shutdown troops and essential civilians who report for work without pay would receive back pay when government funding is restored.
TROOPS?!?! In the middle of THREE WARS?!?!?!
First I’d heard of it, but OH YEAH ~ dateline yesterday:
The services’ senior enlisted advisors had plenty to tell lawmakers about the No. 1 concern among the troops: the effects of the ongoing budget standoff in Congress, including the possibility that troops won’t be paid, permanent change-of-station orders would be delayed and military construction would be cut.
“When we start talking about all of our men and women across all our services deployed in foxholes around the world, yet we’re kind of dangling this thing that we may or may not be able to pay [them] … that is certainly on their minds,” said Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Roy, who testified Wednesday with the other senior enlisted advisors before the House Appropriations Committee’s military construction and veterans affairs panel.
Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler III said one soldier expressed it well at a town hall meeting at Fort Hood, Texas. According to Chandler, the sergeant stood up and said, “I’ve been deployed four times, and I’m a pretty dang good fighter, but I’m a lot better fighter if I’m getting paid … and my wife won’t be near as bad a fighter if you get her paid.”
“I thought that was pretty clever,” Chandler said. “At the end of the day, we have a lot of soldiers who live from paycheck to paycheck, and stopping that pay is a really huge burden hanging over their shoulders right now.”
Quit beating up on Boehner, get the deal done with the absolute MOST you can get out of it, hang the Democrats out to DRY, and make sure EVERYONE hears over and over again for the next year what those S.O.B.s have done to us.
Then we take back the WHOLE thing.
Life, Military Thingies, Nanny State, People, Politics | tree hugging sister | 
April 1, 2011 9:35 am
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Yup, this shutdown could be REALLY ugly for a lot of the federal employees. We are hearing exactly NOTHING on this matter from our own supervisory chain…..whilst back in 1995, we had contingency plans in place well before the shut down. From hints, I suspect that the silence is deliberate. I can’t say if the silence is for political reasons or not, but I suspect the motivation is at least partly political.
But I don’t doubt that a good part of the reason is that the leadership (below the department level, that is) has NO CLUE on what to do. There is NO precedent for this sort of shut down. None. There is SOME money from supplemental appropriations floating around out there, but not enough. And it certainly ain
t in the right pots.
As for beating up on Boehner…..I’ve little confidence in Congress in the first place. But I have to say that he’s doing a decent job, given the situation we’re in.
Mind you, I’m not happy with the budget process thus far. But that’s more to do with the Demonrats and spineless Republicans than anything else.
What’s sad is that these cuts are miniscule if you look at the whole budget. They are so frigging worried about getting re-elected than doing anythig right for the country, fuck them all. Just sayin’…
The Treasury is down to $58.6B in Cash, $130.5B Borrowing Authority
Imagine that you had an average monthly income of about $170 balanced against average monthly expenses of about $940 and that you were more than $14,000 in debt. Then imagine that as of today, you had only $58.60 in cash left in your bank account and $130.50 left on your line of credit.
Now multiply these numbers by 1 billion and you will have the up-to-date financial situation of the U.S. government.
…and the two sides of the house are debating over $30+ billion.
The other thing that bugs me. The way “trillion” is tossed around in economic discussions like it was nothing. I think if $1,000 billion was used instead, it would have a completely different impact.
I agree, Syd.
I want them to talk about the fact that we have a $1,650 billion dollar deficit, to put the $30 billion “deep and painful cuts” that they are arguing about in pathetic perspective.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, they are.
Who’s up for a government-shutdown cruise?
Actually, 1,650,000 million would probably get the point across even better. People understand a million. Not sure they understand a billion.