So the US Government just shut down

[shadykid]

I'm not american and i just have a superficial view on the subject, but i'll just say that i find it outrageous that the US doesn't have public healthcare and i find it even more outrageous that there are so many people opposing it. It's literally the only developed country where this happens.

welcome to what everyone else thinks!

(everyone else=the rest of the world+American liberals)

Edited October 1, 2013 by shadykid

[Second Pronoun]

I'll just say this once, THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HEALTH CARE. It is a pawn being used in this battle and it annoys me that certain politicians decide that they need to take a stand on a certain law when the government being shutdown is a tad bit more important. It irks the shit out of me.

[dondon151]

i get seriously annoyed when talking with friends about this and they suggest that senate democrats are also to blame for being intransigent on defunding obamacare.

this is a classic fallacy of the golden mean. the law passed through congress and its constitutionality was already subject to scrutiny by the supreme court. senate democrats have absolutely zero obligation to capitulate to conservative demands. i would like to commend the senate democrats for allowing the shutdown to happen (and i mean this sincerely). it would have set a disgraceful precedent of a political party holding the government hostage should they have done otherwise.

Edited October 2, 2013 by dondon151

[Sifer]

*sigh* I do not believe any one party or group should just shut down the government and furlough 700,000 workers. They have families that bills need to be paid and mouths to feed and a political party in the USA believes that it is a bargaining tool to just give them leave without pay. And what about the infrastructure that will undoubtedly go untended? It will cost more money to get it up and running again. The GDP will go down, it was at 2.5% annualized 2nd quarter. when I last looked at it, I read that an economist said that 0.1% per week that the government is shut down, money changing hands less quickly hurts everyone. America is slowly recovering, but it still needs all the help it can get since the $85 billion USA bond buying program program is still going on. An entity in the USA cannot have that amount of power...

This makes me consider the parliamentary model. But then America won't make that change the current system and I don't want it to, best to vote the right people within this system. 58% of the USA citizens that can vote did. The other 42% did not, perhaps thinking their votes mean nothing. If they all voted then the USA government can have fresh faces in the White House perhaps a new political party wanting to try new ideas. But I know that is not going to happen. Best to try encourage the listless voters, most won't change but it is a small group of active people are the ones that always change the world.

# furlough

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24358858

GDP growth

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/usa-economy-gdp-idUSL2N0HL1U520130926

turn out rate

http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/election-results-2012-report-reveals-2012-voter-turnout-was-lower-than-2008-and-2004#ixzz2CXZuXyAj

Edited October 2, 2013 by sifer

[shadykid]

so what you're saying is these next few years we need marriage equality votes everywhere

[dondon151]

58% of the USA citizens that can vote did. The other 42% did not, perhaps thinking their votes mean nothing. If they all voted then the USA government can have fresh faces in the White House perhaps a new political party wanting to try new ideas.

when often your vote can realistically only be spent on choosing the lesser of two evils, it's no wonder that american interest in government is so low. it's nothing but wishful thinking to surmise that if politically apathetic americans decided to vote, there will magically be new viewpoints represented in government. our electoral system simply doesn't allow for that.

[shadykid]

when often your vote can realistically only be spent on choosing the lesser of two evils, it's no wonder that american interest in government is so low. it's nothing but wishful thinking to surmise that if politically apathetic americans decided to vote, there will magically be new viewpoints represented in government. our electoral system simply doesn't allow for that.

the disparity between these "two evils" seems to be growing by the day at this point, with reports that the Tea Party is willing to gut Boehner's position if he puts up the CR passed by the Senate

[dondon151]

the disparity between these "two evils" seems to be growing by the day at this point, with reports that the Tea Party is willing to gut Boehner's position if he puts up the CR passed by the Senate

i was referring to the problem that people can be:

socially liberal or conservative

economically liberal or conservative

so clearly the issue with a 2-party system is that there are, broadly, 4 different possible positions, and only 2 of them are being represented. so for a person who is socially liberal but economically conservative, if he values his economic conservatism more, the lesser of 2 evils is the republican party, which sponsors some pretty objectionable socially conservative policies.

[shadykid]

economically conservative and socially liberal?

we call that the Democratic Party

but seriously, apathetic voters only create a self-fulfilling prophecy by not showing up (even if it's all set up to only allow two parties to really compete)

edit: also doesn't help with the nonstop "both sides refuse to compromise" from the media

Edited October 2, 2013 by shadykid

[Robert Stewart]

A Government shutdown? Jesus Christ, this f***ing country.....

[Sifer]

Well one can dream, and dreams sometimes become reality if you try. Remember SOPA, Where the government tried to restrain free speech on the internet? Americans were roused and called their politicians. The elected officials permanently tabled the bill. That was America speaking to the elected officials and they listened due to the fear of keeping their seats. But what can rouse Americans today about their rights and their powers over elected officials? Journalism is a way but too few of rights concerns Americans, rights are things that can be eroded through listlessness sadly.

Edited October 2, 2013 by sifer

[Celice]

but seriously, apathetic voters only create a self-fulfilling prophecy by not showing up (even if it's all set up to only allow two parties to really compete)

As George Carlin would go on to say, the apathetic voter isn't responsible for the mess voters elect into office.

[Phoenix Wright]

i'm loving the fact that my country is run by 12 year-olds that don't understand how to manage money

[shadykid]

i'm loving the fact that my country is run by 12 year-olds that don't understand how to manage money

oh no, I'm sure this is deliberate for some of them

[Excellen Browning]

It's definitely deliberate, and it really worries me that the republicans went as far as they did. I won't say right now that the two party system is to blame for this; in dutchland there's around 6 prominent political parties, and they're in a legislative deadlock, too.

[amadeuscho]

i was referring to the problem that people can be:

socially liberal or conservative

economically liberal or conservative

so clearly the issue with a 2-party system is that there are, broadly, 4 different possible positions, and only 2 of them are being represented. so for a person who is socially liberal but economically conservative, if he values his economic conservatism more, the lesser of 2 evils is the republican party, which sponsors some pretty objectionable socially conservative policies.

the issue with the 2 party system comes from structural problems that have built over that last hundred years that has led to its polarization. As such, the moderates have disappeared almost completely from one party (the republican party), cause the actually center to shift to a more moderate position. This comes from the gerrymandered house districts that are designed to either strongly conservative or strongly liberal. This trickles up so that the Senators are often former house members, and thus they retain that ideology. So the election intensely polarizes the individuals who represent the parties, not the two party system itself.

Not to mention that incentive structure to governing is completely wrong. The dominance of primaries has led to the incentive structure to favor positions rather than results. Namely, polarized positions win you the primary rather than achieving goals.

The moderates existed in both parties up until the 90s. The republican moderates have fallen faster, but the democratic moderates are fewer in numbers as well. So it's not like there wasn't room for these four positions before. The lack of moderates has basically killed negotiation, which also has led to flourishing of the filibuster, which has made impossible to pass most legislation of value. So in short, the capacity exists for both parties to be able to fulfill those four roles rather than the two you outlined, as they have in the past. So the problem isn't the two party system, it's everything that two parties have created.

Viewtiful stop having such well thought out opinions and stuff, you make the rest of us look bad. kthnx.

Anyways I agree with Viewtiful (obviously), and would go a step further and say that I think that the Democrats did exactly the right thing here, because if this sort of hostage taking was ever allowed to work (and that's really what it is: hostage taking), it would have extremely negative consequences for future governing, for both parties.

I don't need to get into a rant, so I'm stopping this post here.

Yeah I was trying to be a little removed from it, but I agree. Make no mistake. This government shutdown is a very deliberate effort by one party, as have all budgetary issues have been over the last 5 years. Part of the problem is that a certain base in the republican party doesn't accept that we have mixed market economy in which government intervention exists, especially during recessions. We are Kenesians now and we have been for awhile. And we intervene in certain markets like we are in Health Care. Whether you philosophical agree or disagree with health care, it's settled law.

The problem is more than just handling the budget or managing money. There's a structure in place to make sure all these things get done with regularity in order to not frighten the markets. That's why there hasn't been a government shutdown in 17 years. And why a debt ceiling fight never existed prior to Obama taking office. One party appears to be willing to do anything to "win." Whatever that means. Even if the credit rating and the U.S. economy is damaged in the process.

And it's not even one party specifically in this instance. It's just one terrible senator named Ted Cruz who has decided to have this fight along with the rest of the tea party republicans. He hasn't even been in the Senate a full year and he's already trying to destroy the place.

[Phoenix Wright]

It's definitely deliberate, and it really worries me that the republicans went as far as they did. I won't say right now that the two party system is to blame for this; in dutchland there's around 6 prominent political parties, and they're in a legislative deadlock, too.

you can blame a two-party system for lots of things, but legislative deadlocks are not one of them. they are the natural occurrences in the legislative system.

anyway, questioning whether or not this was deliberate was not really the point of my post. when entering congress, the strategy amongst political members of any specific party is not to run things into the ground enough to cause nation-wide operations to cease; the strategy arises from a political climate that is already really crappy. the point is, for many reasons, our congress, or perhaps the legislative branch generally, is seemingly too difficult to manage properly. poor use of money, poor use of legislative power (1000s of laws run through a year, some with odd sections that want to allow ridiculous powers, etc. etc.), poor teamwork amongst our representatives, the list could go on for as long as i wanted it to. the structure of our government itself, i think, needs to change. for example, i think term limits in congress could help.

[Life]

I try my best to stay informed on things like this but every article I search for is giving me the effect without explaining the cause past "the government is shut down temporarily". Can anyone give me an article that accurately describes how the US got to this position or describe it in detail?

[FionordeQuester]

Hmm...I won't try to pretend I'm more knowledgable about this than anyone else, particularly because I don't follow these happenings that closely...but doesn't the government shut down every 2-3 years or something?

[I.M. Gei]

Hmm...I won't try to pretend I'm more knowledgable about this than anyone else, particularly because I don't follow these happenings that closely...but doesn't the government shut down every 2-3 years or something?

...The last government shutdown was in 1995-96.

[Phoenix Wright]

I try my best to stay informed on things like this but every article I search for is giving me the effect without explaining the cause past "the government is shut down temporarily". Can anyone give me an article that accurately describes how the US got to this position or describe it in detail?

it'd be a long article detailing the imprudent decisions that congress has made this past decade and a half.

[amadeuscho]

I try my best to stay informed on things like this but every article I search for is giving me the effect without explaining the cause past "the government is shut down temporarily". Can anyone give me an article that accurately describes how the US got to this position or describe it in detail?

I'll try my best.

On the actual passing of the funding bill:

Budget (or more accurately funding bills) are passed every fiscal year to fund the government. Usually they are based on projections of the coming year, so they usually fall short before a new funding bill can be passed. So, congress usually passes continuing resolutions to make it to the next funding bill. The way a bill is passed is that it need to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Then it can be signed by the president. Any differences between the two bills are ironed out in what is known as the conference committee. You can pass the same bill in both houses, which takes away that time.

For this particular continuing resolution, the House and Senate passed two different bills. The House (controlled by the House of Representatives) passed a CR which included language to original take away funding from Obamacare. The Senate (controlled by the Democrats) passed what is known as a clean CR, in that it has no language relating to Obamacare. The House and Senate worked over months to get the CR to pass. One particular Senator named Ted Cruz, used his influence within the Tea Party to rally towards having the CR defund Obamacare. This eventually was changed to just delaying the program for a year. Ted Cruz influenced Republican members of the House to push for defunding/delaying Obama care. The two CR's actually cover the same language relating to the actual funding of the government (the amount, time the government will be funded), they differ in the Obamacare part. Essentially, Obama and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are defending their key legislative achievement over the last 5 years, while Ted Cruz has been trying to destroy it an through unrelated bill.

Keep in mind that Ted Cruz is not the leader of the House of Representives or the Republican members of the house; that would be Speaker John Boehner. Ted Cruz is a newly elected Senator who probably wants to run for president. John Boehner has no control over the more conservative wing (Tea Party) of the House. So Ted Cruz is influencing it with his power among the Tea party. So when it came to deadline, there was no way to get a bill to the president's desk to pass it. Thus the shutdown happened.

on how the US got in this position.

The deficits we have currently are a built of lower taxes from the earlier 2000s, the Wars, as well as lost revenue from the recession. So the yearly deficit existed when Obama came into office. He cannot simply cut government spending or it risks deepen the recession through that effect on the economy. This may differ based on your stance towards Keynesian economics. Essentially, in Keynesian economics, you run deficits in the short term during recessions in order to shorten them. In booms periods you raise taxes and cut spending. Since Obama got into the office, the deficit has been cut in half. As the economy has improved, he has increased certain taxes and ended some of the short term spending plans.

The national debt is the debt that the US incurs over time. It's a collection of all debts over the last 200 years. The amount of debt has increased exponentially as the US economy has grown. Essentially, the later decades have added much more than the previous ones.While high debt is not desirable, because of the trustworthiness of American bonds, essentially its no danger to us at the current moment.The debt is not the deficit.

This is 2009/2010. The rising costs of health care has the potential to cripple the US economy in the future. As such, the Affordable Care Act was crafted early in Obama's term. Within negotiations in the Senate, its rising unpopularity caused all key Republicans to drop out of negotiations. So the Democrats passed in the Senate without any Republican votes. In the House, the majority of Democrats passed the bill with only one republican vote. And the president signed into law, on essentially a partisan vote. The public's hate toward Obamacare allowed the Republicans to retake the house in November 2010.

Since the Republicans took over the house, they have voted to repeal Obamacare countless times, knowing full well that it will never pass in the Senate or be signed by the President. Still, this has persisted over the last three years. So Ted Cruz took advantage of this hatred and convince a certain number in the house to add this to CR. This, coupled with the anxiety over deficits/debt (which aren't the same) built up from the last 5 years, has caused the Republicans in the house to push for what I outlined in the first half of this post.

[Sifer]

As George Carlin would go on to say, the apathetic voter isn't responsible for the mess voters elect into office.

Apathetic voter are the reason the USA is in this mess. They do not care what is outcome of the election but seem to complain when politicians do something. Why are they complaining now when politicians pass unliked laws when the voters had an option to choose who was in that seat in the first place. Remember 52% voted, 42% did not, if 10% of that voted is 4.2% that can be added to any seat. That would change many elections seats. I remember reading a quote. "It is not the majority that decides elections. It is the majority of the minority who votes that decides elections." So the less people who vote, the more your vote matters. At least in America and the electoral college, winner take all.

someone mentioned why Republicans are doing this

House Republicans have also demanded a series of policy concessions - including on the president's health law and on financial and environmental regulations - in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24358858

[Rehab]

On the most basic level/the shit most people already know, Congress wouldn't pass a budget, because each of the two legislative bodies that a bill has to get approved by currently have different majority parties controlling them, the house by the republicans and the senate by the democrats.

Context (all IIRC):some years back, before Obama got re-elected, when a similar showdown happened, Obama ended up caving compromising caving to a lot of republican demands in passing a budget, and both parties kicked a lot of the hard decision-making that they've failed to get done down the road. Despite the number of republican demands that got fulfilled, a lot of the republican elected officials among the frankly loony (their position is very close to "no government is good government") tea party wing of it felt totally betrayed that the guy who brokered the budget deal, House Speaker (whose position is to speak for the position of that legislative house's majority party and negotiate with the president directly, for the uninitiated) John Boehner, had made them compromise at all. Democrats were also unhappy, because they thought Obama had enough political capital going in that agreeing to the deal was unnecessary, and that the compromise wouldn't even serve to get the repubs to lighten up a bit. (flash forward to now, we're seeing that bit was just about right.) Obama might've been thinking about reelection and/or passing a budget just to pass a budget I never did get the scoop on that really.

At that point, nobody was happy, but government agencies and shit were still running. (I posted a truncated list of the effects a failure to pass a budget has at the top of the last page)

And now with today's shit, the House still has a republican majority (though weaker now? IIRC? if not by much), the Senate still has a democratic majority, and obviously Obama still exists, yet each side acts like it has THE political mandate. About half the elected republicans have become even more radically anti-government and less willing to compromise and are getting worse, such that the republicans of the previous term, who could objectively be considered one of the most obstructionist (republican) voting blocs in U.S. history, might actually look kind of moderate in comparison. The republican party is more or less split in half between a group that's vaguely willing to compromise enough that everything doesn't blow up, and a group that literally takes pride in the idea of blowing everything up before giving an inch.

Neither has the power to overtake the other in the legislature right at the moment, but the people electing them are leaning ever towards supporting the latter more, despite that even with their powers combined, they have no chance of pushing legislation through a Senate with the votes to can it, much less get it by an Obama less willing than ever to agree to it.

And both the democrats at large and Obama are just not budging. Both groups put forth budgets that the other voted down, and now we're basically waiting for somebody to crack. Overall popularity across the country would suggest that the republicans would be more likely to cave first, just by sheer numbers, but A) these guys have never cared about, and have even scoffed off, shit like nationwide popularity ratings, and B) a lot of these guys care more about getting reelected than getting any legislation passed, and for all we can tell, the people who end up voting them in seem to be actively supporting that shit. People are getting elected to refuse to do anything. Putting aside gerrymandering registered voting districts*, anyway.

*This bit actually is argued to be the fault of both parties- both parties, when they get elected, have the authority to rejigger the voting districts to which the people of the state that elected them belong, such that areas that heavily support one party get split up, and those people get shoved into the boundaries of new lines that that group their votes with people who support totally different shit, even when these divisions may be totally arbitrary. The republicans are kind of notorious for the practice, at least among the crowds I hear from the most, but, when asked about it, one democratic elected official whose name and position I forget had roughly this to say:

"Well, I know it's unpopular, [or even bad,] but you have to give something to the winners."

Woe to the conquered, basically.

you can blame a two-party system for lots of things, but legislative deadlocks are not one of them. they are the natural occurrences in the legislative system.

anyway, questioning whether or not this was deliberate was not really the point of my post. when entering congress, the strategy amongst political members of any specific party is not to run things into the ground enough to cause nation-wide operations to cease; the strategy arises from a political climate that is already really crappy. the point is, for many reasons, our congress, or perhaps the legislative branch generally, is seemingly too difficult to manage properly. poor use of money, poor use of legislative power (1000s of laws run through a year, some with odd sections that want to allow ridiculous powers, etc. etc.), poor teamwork amongst our representatives, the list could go on for as long as i wanted it to. the structure of our government itself, i think, needs to change. for example, i think term limits in congress could help.

There might be things related to the general legislative clusterfuck that this could alleviate, I haven't heard much about the idea myself, but a lot of the batshit crazy tea party republicans that even Boehner can't seem to satisfy have only been elected to office once or twice.

wtf viewtiful and sifer, no fair using your mach shit to get your post in before me

[amadeuscho]

Apathetic voter are the reason the USA is in this mess. They do not care what is outcome of the election but seem to complain when politicians do something. Why are they complaining now when politicians pass unliked laws when the voters had an option to choose who was in that seat in the first place. Remember 52% voted, 42% did not, if 10% of that voted is 4.2% that can be added to any seat. That would change many elections seats. I remember reading a quote. "It is not the majority that decides elections. It is the majority of the minority who votes that decides elections." So the less people who vote, the more your vote matters. At least in America and the electoral college, winner take all.

someone mentioned why Republicans are doing this

House Republicans have also demanded a series of policy concessions - including on the president's health law and on financial and environmental regulations - in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24358858

apathetic voters aren't the reason. voting percentage has roughly remain the same over the last 20 years. It even increased in 2008. This includes during the 90s when a budget surplus was produced.

The problem is the American people are getting the government they elected. Elections give politicians the incentive for gridlock over solutions. Politicians (read republicans) who pass bills along with the other party are voted/primaried out. But voters keeps reelecting the people that do nothing.

So as much as the people want to claim the problems in the government, the fact is, they voted for it.

On Term Limits: Term limits won't work because old senators aren't in themselves the problem. Some of the best senators are the longest serving, because they have the most experience reaching across the aisle. Dick Luger was probably the best republican in 2008 to 2012 to work with Democrats (he got primaried out by the way), and also happened to be the longest serving. On the democratic side, I would say Dick Durbin and Carl Levin are two of the best Senators. Carl Levin in particular has served for a long time.

Term limits would give you less experienced legislators that are more easily influenced by lobbyists. Not a good option.