After a 16-day standoff, the government shutdown ended early Thursday morning with President Obama signing the mea- sure agreed upon by Congress Wednesday night.
So what was accomplished in the two-plus week standoff?
Oh yeah, absolutely nothing. Nothing constructive at least. The overall economy took an esti- mated $24 billion hit. I’m still searching for the good, but I’m pretty certain I’m going to come up empty on that one.
Essentially, nothing was decid- ed upon with Wednesday’s decision to reopen the government. Congress approved government funding through January, and the borrowing limit will again need to be increased shortly after.
So basically, the deal reached Wednesday gives the government a few more months to reach a true agreement.
The last 16 days have been nothing but a good ’ole fashioned vacation for our government. I’m sure it was well deserved. We all know Congress doesn’t get enough time off (please turn on your sarcasm detectors).
Does anyone have any faith that we won’t be facing the same problem come mid-January when the current agreement ends?
Even the small group of lawmakers who are tasked with ending the budget standoffs made no promises.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in his statement the group’s goals were “to get this debt under con- trol, to do smart deficit reduction and to do things that we think will grow the economy and get people back to work.”
The standoff certainly grew the economy. Not.
I don’t care if you’re a democrat or republican, our government has turned into a beacon of inefficiency and partisanship, and both sides are to blame.
It’s absolutely ridiculous. If it were possible, I would be in favor of firing all 535 Congressmen and Congresswomen. If this were any other job, they’d have been fired a long time ago. Good thing the government operates under dif- ferent rules than the rest of the country.
This shutdown cost the econ- omy an estimated $1.43 billion each of the 16 days. That’s unfath- omable. Maybe if a real solution was met then it would have been worth it, but sadly that is not the case.
So now, we’ll sit back and see if Congress can reach a real agree- ment by mid-January.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
