Friday, April 8, 2011

Government shutdown looms...Boehner & Company's strategy of "trickle-down" sacrifice

Now is the time for your tears...
In the likely event of a "shutdown of the government," John  Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, et. al. - who have refused to compromise even with their own opening offer of $33 billion in spending cuts to avert a crisis - will continue to get their paychecks.

While the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan may not.

Senate Democrats have passed a bill to impose  "shared sacrifice," denying Congress and the President pay if there is a shutdown,  but so far the GOP-majority House are deferring to their preferred notion of "trickle-down sacrifice" and will keep their own money coming.

(Troops link via commenter "Seth" at Ta-Nehisi Coates/Atlantic.)

2 comments:

  1. A few likely highlights from a government shutdown: the families of soldiers would miss paychecks for a month and investigations into the criminal behavior of investment bankers would be delayed. All this to keep women from getting Federal help with cancer screening and family planning. Thank G*d for the integrity and patriotism of the Tea Party.

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  2. “They said the reason why they wouldn’t be able to do any delivering tomorrow was because the government was closing down,” Bracy, 71, told The Huffington Post. “I don’t know what that has to do with the food.”
    -From a Huff Post article about a meals for seniors program that would suffer from a Federal shutdown.
    Possibly the comments were intended to make a rhetorical point, but it seems to show that even the person receiving the meals didn't really understand who was providing this service.
    There is plenty to hate about the Federal government, but this failure of leadership has real human consequences on the things that the Government does well.

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