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Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You?
The partial government shut-down that the U.S. is experiencing right now is about to enter its second week. Various government functions and services have been disrupted (including some web sites, whether it's a good idea or not), and lots of workers on the Federal payroll have been furloughed. But since the U.S. government is involved in so many aspects of modern American life, you don't have to work for the government to be affected by the budget politics at play. So, whether or not you work for the government in any capacity, the question we'd like to hear your answer to is this: What does the shutdown mean to you, in practical terms, whether the effects are good, bad, or indifferent?
Well, I've subjectively seen one effect -- a huge spike in the number of telemarker calls I've received in the past week, apparently due to no longer being able to report them to the DO NOT CALL registry (which is shutdown due to the gov't shutdown).
Well, paid-vacation with the chance of not being able to pay your bills and maybe losing your apartment or home or car or other things which will seriously mess with their lives and well-being, if their full paychecks are delayed long enough. Just because they'll eventually get paid doesn't mean that they wouldn't be negatively impacted in the meantime, if they are in a position that forces them to live paycheck to paycheck.
Of course, I would fucking hope the average person has saved enough money to cover one month's worth of expenses just for an emergency.
Honestly, the most this whole mess has affected me, a college professor at a state university, is to fill my head with thoughts of taking my bare hands and strangle the life out of some of these yahoos in Washington. I know of many people who have been furloughed, as I am involved in federally funded research and have many colleagues who work under the umbrella of the federal gov't, some of whom have been furloughed, some of whom have not. My thoughts lately are about the looming debt ceiling "crisis" and how perhaps we are truly approaching the moment with the United States of America goes the way of every other superpower the world has ever seen... only we still have nukes and billions of guns. Sadly, if this happens, it will have come from within, not the result of a worthy enemy. And make no mistake about it: Pull away the curtain and this is all the doings of the ultra-rich who are pulling the strings. These people have nothing but pure disdain for the commoners and the poors and do not care that they are playing roulette, since all chambers are loaded and the gun is not pointing at them.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
In US terminology, it's the "left wing" that's voting down the proposed budgets to continue funding the Federal government. But even then, that's really a misnomer.
The Constitution only allows the House to originate bills for spending and taxing - and under the control of the Republican party, they're only originating bills that don't fund Obamacare. The Democrat-controlled Senate and White House are voting down and threatening to veto these budgets, and thus the partial government "shutdown".
I don't like the omnibus budgets, just 30 years ago Congress used to fund the government by "legislation by appropriation", many individual bills voted on individually, instead of all or nothing. But besides this, I rather enjoy the fact that all the arms of government must agree, before money can be taxed and spent, or before someone can be thrown in prison, etc.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Please note that many of the "right-wingers" got elected by GERRYMANDERING THEIR DISTRICTS, which is why there's a hefty Republican majority in the House despite the fact that a respectable majority of overall House votes went to Democrats. The American people are pretty much split right down the middle in terms of ideology (that respectably majority was respectable, not overwhelming). We are overwhelmingly in favor, however, of not shutting down government, of not having a dysfunctional congress, and of not playing childish hostage games with real consequences just to demonstrate displeasure with a passed law.
In other words, 'we had a year to come up with a budget and you decided to wait until the last minute and blackmail the rest of the government to get your way. If I give in to that, this crap will never end...guess I can't negotiate." Your POV is a little skewed.
Since congress already voted to pay all furloughed workers for the days they missed, what is exactly the point of not having them come into work anymore?
Er... have you been reading the news haven't you? OK, I'll explain.
It's never been about saving money. The GOP wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but doesn't have the votes in the Senate to do it, much less override the veto that would inevitably provoke.
So plan B was to take funding for implementing ACA out of the budget. But they don't have the votes to do that either.
Now when you are arguing over the budget, you still have to keep things running; soldiers and air traffic controllers have to be paid. But the president doesn't have the constitutional power to spend money; he has to spend what Congress tells him to spend, neither more nor less (a lot of Americans don't seem to understand this). He has a lot of influence over the budget, but ultimately Congress has the power of the purse.
So what Congress does when it can't resolve its budget differences on time is pass something called a "continuing resolution". It pretty much says "continue on as you were under the last budget for so many days or until we hash this out." Congress is behind on its budget work so, it's time for a continuing resolution.
What the House Republicans tried to do was slip the budget stuff they didn't have the votes to pass into the continuing resolution. When the Senate stripped that stuff out and sent the CR back to the House, the Republican leadership refused to bring the CR to a vote until their demands were met. Those demands have been a moving target, running from a long laundry list of priorities (including stuff like the Keystone pipeline), to anything that will allow them to claim victory. Boehner has also floated a cut of a certain size to yet-to-be-named budget items as a condition, but this was precisely the gambit that was tried in 2011. Those cuts never materialized, triggering the sequestration cuts across the board this year, including defense. That's not very credible. So the only way the House Republicans come out of this with something that looks like a victory would be to get ACA de-funded, which is not going to happen.
The House Republicans are technically within their rights not to bring an continuing resolution to the floor, but they're using it to undermine the Constitution. They don't have the votes to get what they want, nor have they anything offer in exchange that will persuade anyone else to vote with them, so they're trying to *compel* the Senate to vote the way they want by shutting down the government.
Honestly, it feels like final years of the Roman Republic, when wealthy, ambitious men competed to carve power bases for themselves out of what had been offices of service to the Republic. Crassus Boehner, anyone?
Now they basically get a free paid vacation. If the taxpayer is on the hook for their salaries, they should be doing their jobs.
I agree with you. They should be back at their jobs, and being paid on payday as usual (you do know that essential employees aren't getting paid). But that's not going to happen until one side or another cracks under the political pressure. Already the US Chamber of Commerce is wading in with promises of primary support to Republicans who vote for a clean CR.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Those of us who are funded at least partly by NSF grants are potentially in trouble. For people who have money in their account from an active grant that will last a few months - all the better. For those whose paycheck depends on the next installment from a grant, tough luck. The worst affected will be folks who had payments and grant reviews in progress.
More info @ http://www.nsf.gov./ The most relevant portions:
Payments: No payments will be made during the shutdown.
Issuance of New Grants and Cooperative Agreements: No new grants or cooperative agreements will be awarded.
FYI, the Republicans in the house passed FOUR funding bills before the shutdown, which allocated more money than was spent last year. The ball's in the democrat's court.
The Republicans rejected 18 requests to discuss the budget. The Democrats compromised to fund the govt. at sequester levels. Shutting down the government or making it default is not the way to fight a constitutional law. Back to you Republicans.
Why golly gee they sure did didn't they - they passed those bills all big and purty! They just forgot to fund a particular LAW, you know that affordable health care thingy. I'm sure it's not important to you but the majority of the elected reps, they like it and so do their constituents. In fact they like it so much that the 30+ times your buds tried to remove it they failed! Why they even tried taking it to the Supreme Court and failed to overturn it!
So while that was all well and good that you guys passed that steaming turd no one wants it because it puts a noose around a piece of legislation that was very hard fought for and that a majority want. We'll be happy to pat you on the head for it though okay cuz I know feeling good about yourself is important to you. Now if you would be so kind as to put up for a VOTE a piece of legislation that actually fully funds the ENTIRE Govt. and not the pretty little piece parts you think look sweetest then we could see what the MAJORITY of the people's representatives think about it. Pretty please?
P.S. Also, next time you asshats decide to try and hold someone hostage could you just maybe do it to your own family or something and not the entire country? We'd really appreciate it if you could follow the rules on these here bill thingy's - if you haven't seen the video for how this is done it can be found here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag
What I find fascinating is this: In most other democracies, if the government can't pass a budget, then the legislature is dissolved and an election is called. New people are elected and they try again. Seems crazy to me that there's no framework of this in the USA - If the government is at loggerheads it's time to let the people decide via an election.
That is the stupidest thing I've read today. It was so dumb I had to double check I wasn't on reddit.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
So what? No Congress is required to fund any law or agency created by a previous one. They can just ignore them and not provide any funds. That's what the phrase "power of the purse" means.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Hi. I don't usually reply to posts, but I read yours and felt compelled.
While I'm aware that Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution states:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills. [1]
yet I'm unaware that the House has the prerogative to decide spending levels: The budget and debt aren't bills for raising revenue. Please explain your source?
I'm not interested in which party to blame, I've simply never heard this assertion before.
Thanks!
[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States_of_America#Section_7
> Both, equally.
Exactly ... well, perhaps not exactly equally, but that's part of the problem. People think that because their particular politicritters are fractionally better on some things, that makes the other party a true Crowd of Hoodlums.
Both parties may have different policies and beliefs and different strategies for firing up their base(s) and winning elections, but anyone who thinks that either party is for the "common guy," they are delusional. Simply delusional.
The attempt by both parties to blame this current shutdown on the other would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
It's interesting to watch this from the outside. I don't quite understand how you got into this situation. In Australia, if the Senate blocks supply of funding for the government to run, that triggers a double dissolution of parliament. At that point, a general election of both the Upper and Lower houses of the Government is triggered. All seats are open. The public then gets to vote on which idiots we want to run the country. Generally, the voters side against the politicians that caused the mess in the first place. So it rarely gets to this point.
We have until then to divide the public into credit is income, and we spent too much already and we can't afford another entitlement. Because the public knows so little about the borrowing of money by the government (payments need to be made.. no problem just borrow more to make the payments until our entire income goes to makeing payments with no other payments being made. Someday that train will wreck
And when Clinton left office, the government had a surplus. Rather than use that surplus to pay down the debt, which would have created more surplus, and a positive feedback cycle (up until the point when 9/11 slammed the brakes on the economy). But, rather than do the fiscally-responsible thing, Bush decided he wanted a tax cut to bump his approval rating, so that when the economy hit the wall, the lower tax rate compounded the problem... and rather than let those tax cuts expire, the Republicans would rather continue to kick the problem down the road a little further so that they don't face the political backlash of having *gasp* raised taxes.
No no no no! They had 7 months to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget that BOTH groups passed. 18 times the Senate tried to get a committee together to work on those differences. 18 times the HOUSE refused to appoint anyone to do so. Now that the shit has hit the fan the HOSUE says sure we'll talk so long as the health care plan is axed, the president said "eat shit".
Lets be VERY clear here - the HOUSE has a bill that would fund the entire Govt sitting on their desk. All that has to be done, because the majority over there has agreed to pass it, is put it up for a VOTE. Boner the Repub leader REFUSES to do so.
Lay the blame where it belongs - on a MINORITY of Republican asshats in the House being led by Bahner aka Boner. Yes, I WILL remember this come election time - no doubt!
here's a refresher on the process for you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag
Now, the House is passing smaller, targeted spending bills that make the things this guy s talking about unnecessary.
Oh, yes; the Democrats should agree to doing it this way so that they can lose the fight over the Affordable Care Act without a chance to preserve it. If they let the House pass bills that fund the government on a program-by-program basis, then the House Republicans will slowly work their way through bills that fund every government program except the Affordable Care Act. And by the time this happens, the Democrats will have already conceded on every other funding issue, so they'll have nothing to use to bargain with the Republicans to preserve the President's signature program, and the Democrats will have allowed the Republicans to kill the Affordable Care Act by inches. And the last few funding bills will be over clearly niggling-cost but high-visibility programs, so that if the Democrats try to get up on their high horse and demand funding for the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans can point at them and laugh at how they're willing to hold up these minor programs in order to get this much bigger program funded, making them look ridiculous. The Democrats can't concede on an a la carte funding process.
You mean the tax cut that Barack Obama just made permanent? That one? I got some news. The tax cut happened in 2001. The tax rates have been in effect since then, or 12 years. More than a decade. Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house when we balanced the budget. Spending and taxes originate in the House, and no matter how much Barack Obama wants it to be true, they will never originate in the White House.
I have before worked for an employer who said he could not pay me for a while, but I should keep working.
That happened a few times over a few years. Eventually I got my money back but it took a long time and there was a significant back pay that floated for a year.
So knowing that was a pattern, what did I do? I left to find other work.
Government is NO DIFFERENT. If you are going to obviously be screwed over every time the Government needs to figure out a yearly budget (hint: they can't) or bump against the debt ceiling (hint: very often), then you need to LEAVE.
You didn't say if you were enlisted or not but it seems like not. Most people take government jobs because they are easier but if you are not liking this new tradeoff you need to leave, which is what every worker in the private sector would generally do... the mistake is thinking that delayed pay and worse is something that only happens to government workers during a furlough, because in real life it happens to people quite often.
I hope more government workers figure this out, and fast - and that it takes the shine of government work for others also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What you are seeing is the liberal's strategy for staying in power. Get as many people as possible dependent on the government. Then nobody dare oppose them or they will threaten to take away the government teat like what is happening right now. Obamacare is their attempt to get the majority of the population dependent on government for medical care. Imagine the power they will wield when they can threaten to shut down the government and take away your health care.
Every point in your post is the complete opposite of the truth. It's the Republicans who repeatedly threaten to take away the Government when they don't get concession on top of concession. And most of the safety net programs are designed to keep you from becoming destitute and therefore remain employable instead of becoming a social burden. And the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not Government health care; It's the opposite of that. You are required to take responsibility for yourself and get yourself insured so we don't have to pay for you when things go wrong, but beyond that it's up to you to make a deal with your own private insurer. They even provide an online free market system in which to do it. It's a Conservative wet dream, but they can't let Obama get credit for it. That's why they have no plan themselves, just repeal and go back to the old system.
So now they're demanding we bring back pre-existing conditions, re-enstate lifetime insurance caps, make it harder for low-income and working class women to control their fertility, make us pay for some uninsured YOLO's emergency room visit, keep graduate students or people starting their career from staying on previous insurance while they're getting on their feet, eliminate preventive care for diabetics and other high-risk individuals forcing them to go to the emergency room when things get bad, eliminate vaccination programs, allow insurers to raise rates to increase their profits arbitrarily, prevent individuals starting businesses to self-insure in an open competitive marketplaces or else they'll shut down the Government, refuse to negotiate a budget, and default on the debt. Yeah. That makes sense.
E pluribus unum
So which is it? Are you too stupid to figure this out for yourself? Or are you a liar, intending to deceive the people reading this site?
Well, there's three kinds of lies; Lies, damned lies, and statistics. You can quote yours, he can quote his, and nobody will be any better informed when you two are done pissing in the wind while yelling at each other.
On a very basic level, Obamacare supporters have the position that poor people, who don't have enough money to afford health care, should be forced into buying health care plus the costs of program administration overhead from the government. On it's face, it seems pretty obvious this will mean that people will be worse off; If they couldn't afford it before, how are they going to afford it now?
The flip of this is though that health care costs aren't a simple x + y = z equation. The reason a lot of health care is so high is because people are uninsured or underinsured and so they only go to the hospital when the symptoms become severe enough to qualify as an emergency. Emergency room visits aren't just expensive because of labor and resource costs... they're expensive because you have to have enough spare capacity to handle the very worst case scenario -- in other words, you're paying for excess capacity to have a safety margin. And many of those visits wouldn't be necessary if people were having proper, planned, preventative care instead.
If people could go to the doctor whenever they needed to, on a flat rate system (not per visit, not with deductibles, not with all this complicated bullshit), you'd probably see costs drop off by a significant portion. Obamacare may accomplish this change in patient behavior. If it does... the aggregate healthcare costs will drop.
The second part of the equation, and the part Obamacare doesn't address, is that the current system we have with health insurance, auditing, billing records -- an absolutely massive and complex system that covers up a lot of flaws and makes investigation incredibly time consuming and difficult to the point you need a forensic accountant to break down the average person's bill, means that the administrative costs make up a huge portion of health care. Do you really think it costs $250 to run a urinalysis? Or to do bloodwork? No, it doesn't. The supplies and labor is much less than that. But because of a massive billing system, combined with over a dozen layers of auditing and reporting, means that administrative costs take a big bite out.
It is this second problem that will get worse under Obamacare. How much worse, we won't know until the system is deployed, and the initial kinks worked out so we have a stable baseline to draw comparisons from (You never judge a system based on it's initial performance -- there will be lots of bugs and training costs up front that simply can't be anticipated. You have to look at it once it enters the maintenance phase to evaluate the true cost of it correctly).
As you can see, the problem is much more complex than just pulling some numbers out your ass (You, and Forbes magazine, both guilty as charged). We don't have the numbers yet to know whether this is going to save money, or cost money.
All we can really debate at this moment in time is the ethics of having a national healthcare system. For my part; I think it's long overdue. We need it. I'm not sure this is the best implimentation, but... whether it succeeds or fails, it will tell us a lot about what we need to know to make better decisions about health care as a country down the line. It is a good experiment. It should be carried out without delay, and the results published.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's basically the same story in Canada (and, I suspect, many commonwealth nations) - if the government tables a budget and it's defeated, the country has an immediate election. And since random elections are generally not appreciated by the public, any party seen as "responsible" for the election basically lives or dies on their reason for bringing down the government. Was the ruling party off their rocker? They're probably going to get turfed. Was a minor party just jerking the entire country around for political points? They can expect a massacre at the ballot box. Thus, we too rarely get into situations where the government is in such a tizzy that they can't even pay the bills. So watching the US government throw a hissy-fit that puts the entire country (and much of the global economy) at risk is something very, very strange to watch. I hope they resolve it soon, because playing chicken with a US default isn't something that anyone wants to see.
PS: We're really super jealous of your elected senate up here. Ours is basically a big pit that we throw money into, and all of the PM's buddies get to dive into it like Scrooge McDuck.
Thats a fair point, except it exposes that BOTH parties are willing to shut the government down over their own ideals.
This ruse is only working because people aren't aware of the subtleties of how governments are financed; particularly OURS. We're a country where just calling Obamacare the ACA increases favorability by 10% or more. And, pointing out what it actually does increases it by more than that.
Look at some of the uninformed, superficial arguments being regurgitated here "but Republicans presented 4 proposals and Obama refuses to negotiate!"
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Well:
"Obamacare is their attempt to get the majority of the population dependent on government for medical care."
Since the vast majority of people will continue to pay unsubsidized price of their health insurance to private companies, there is no possible way this statement, which is the crux of his entire statement, can possibly be true.
"Get as many people as possible dependent on the government. Then nobody dare oppose them"
The federal programs instituted by FDR have been around for about 70 years now, and Democrats have most definitely NOT stayed in power that whole time. Even if there was the slightest bit of truth to this claim, all the Republicans have to do is promise not to take away Obamacare, and they're right back on-par with Democrats, aren't they? Besides, Republicans are facing a demographic shift that is promising to make them non-viable in national politics in just a decade or so, meaning Democrats don't have to do ANYTHING to undermine them. The Republicans have done a superb job undermining themselves.
"What you are seeing is the liberal's strategy for staying in power."
In fact Obamacare was terribly unpopular, and numerous Democratic senators lost their seats specifically because they voted for it. They must have voted for it for other reasons than political expediency.
"Imagine the power they will wield when they can threaten to shut down the government and take away your health care."
Except it's always Republicans threatening to shut down the government, and taking away or "privatizing" government services.
Every single sentence in his post is quite easily provably factually incorrect. And the implication of some vast, sinister conspiracy makes it troll/flamebait.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's similar in the UK and Canada too - failing to pass the budget counts as a vote of no confidence in the government which triggers a general election. Having lived in the US for several years though I think the problem with their system of government is that it has not been updated in over 200 years. It started off as a brilliant, world-leading system for the late 18th century but it has so many checks and balances in it that updating it is all but impossible without an overwhelming consensus that is rarely achievable. The result is that they are left limping along with a 200+ year old governmental system that was designed when communication with the capital took days or weeks by horse.
For the senate to compromise with the Tea Party is like you having to compromise with someone that is threatening to shoot you.
Tea Party: I want to shoot you in the head, OK?
You:No.
Tea Party: OK, let's compromise. How about if I just shoot you in the stomach?
You:No.
Tea Party:Be reasonable! Then just let me shoot you in the hand. This is my final offer.
You:No.
Tea Party: So you won't negotiate. So, I'll just put up roadblocks everywhere so nothing can get though. And it's all your fault!