Slashdot Mirror
Feds Prep For E-Gov Shutdown
dcblogs writes "If the federal government is shutdown midnight Friday, the feds plan to stop updating government Web sites that aren't delivering essential services. 'Most Web sites will not continue, only those Web sites that are part of these accepted activities would continue to operate,' the senior White House official said Tuesday. 'Accepted activities,' refers to essential, life and safety-related government services. The IRS, however, will continue to accept tax returns filed electronically and to process payments. 'We need to be able to collect the money that is owed to the U.S. government,' the official said. Paper-based returns won't be processed."
You conveniently left out that Obama tried to negotiate a budget and the Republicans decided to change their goal from $33 billion in cuts to $40 billion, just a few days ago. Note, I'm an independent, I hate both parties, but really the Tea Party Republicans are being idiots here...and at least some of the non-Tea Party Republicans seem to agree with that sentiment. It's called negotiating; what we instead have is "I'm taking my ball and going home!!"
Furthermore, it's all really idiotic, because that $40 billion or whatever in cuts doesn't apply to this year's budget only. It applies to this year and the next several years! The actual cuts in any given year are relatively small, but they multiply them out over several years to make the numbers look bigger so we're all impressed by how Congress is cracking the whip. And it's moot, since Congress passes a new budget every year (roughly), because next year they could change what's funded/cut anyway; there's nothing forcing them to uphold the cuts/spending made in a previous year.
In short, as usual, the politicians are lying. They could cut $1 out of this year's budget, the remainder out of the next 9 years, and all we'd hear is how they saved $40 billion.