We aren’t out of the woods yet…but the government won’t be shutting down at the end of the week. House and Senate leaders have bought 2 more weeks and there are $4 billion in spending cuts. That’s a start.
A Washington Post poll released earlier in the week showed that both parties would share the blame if government services shut down. Additionally from the Washington Post:
Both sides also recognize that they are not on particularly strong political footing.
Republicans, who only recently returned to power in the House, understand that their mandate is fragile – and that it is not to bring the roof down.
“The American people’s priorities are clear,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “They want to keep the government open, and they want to cut spending.”
That seems fair. Cut spending and keep services. Its the human condition most of us can agree with. Both chambers of congress will be real busy the next 2 weeks and it won’t be a pretty sight. Essential programs seem to be in the eye of the beholder. I would slice 10% off all budgets and be done with it. I guess not everyone seems things that way.
Whatever happened to “jobs” “jobs” “jobs”. I think the average persons first priority is a job.
We here in northern va are not suffering like the rest of the country so to some extent we are in our little bubble.
the more government grows, the more the private sector shrinks, the more creativity, entrepreneurism, and free enterprise are stifled, the more jobs are lost. jobs, jobs, jobs indeed
p.s. $4 billion is a rounding error. the day of reckoning approacheth
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville
@3, turn your radio off. You are going beginning to sound like you wear a tin foil hat. Emma hasn’t made any lately so you might get some things piped in you don’t want!
@e
E, have to agree with you on the more government grows…take the issue of the homeless. There are 20 agencies all pursing the same money to try to solve the problem, with no common set of regulations or rules. And those written things are so big and complicated, nothing gets done. Even the General Accounting Office (GAO) did a study and showed there are three different definitions for homelessness in the Fed. And when it comes to Medicare & Medicaid, we may have one Center for it based in Baltimore, but about another 50 agencies “in theroy” connected to handle them, but diverse in their approaches.
Moon’s suggestion of cutting 10% could start with tossing out all the redundancy or streamlining the Agencies.
one would think that finding money to save would be easy, but the goal of every agency (and every person responsible for a budget) is to spend every penny they have. They want a next years budget of no less than they had this year, so they need to spend it. This does lead to waste, but many Government Contractors like it, as they can put more people on a project doing nothing. There is usually very little incentive for a contract to come in under budget.
That message above should have gone to e. I hit the 3. Perhaps it is better that way.
—————————————————————————————————————–
Pat, once again, I agree with you. Use it or lose it is wasteful and encourages last minute silly spending. There is almost no incentive to change this behavior.
Probably those most critical of government could be labeled government contractors. Those are the same people that want to take from the public employees. Guess they don’t realize that they would then have no one to work for.
@Raymond Beverage
Would please give us the names of the 20 agencies involved in trying to solve the homeless problem?
Also please provide citing for the General Accountability Office report.
Well, deciding which party is at fault is I guess a little more preferable than the Post’s sickening banter last week about which party stood to GAIN the most from the shutdown.
It looks like both are getting the blame.
@George S. Harris
George, be glad to provide the info. The GAO report “A Common Vocabulary Could Help Agencies Collaborate and Collect More Consistent Data” focused primarily on HUD, Dept of Educ, and HHS. The report can be found at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10702.pdf
By the way, there are over 1,000 reports in the last decade where GAO has comments on issues around the homeless.
The 20 Agencies: The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness is (in theroy) the coordinating Council across the Fed. When you go to the website, you will see the list to the left…19 various Departments/Agencies + the Council for the 20. Website: http://www.ich.gov/