Shutdown 1, 2, Buckle Your Revenues!

Yet again the congress is at risk for another shutdown with honestly no surprise from most Americans after the media wildfire and knowledgeable expanse that swept the nation at alarming rates. This time the congress has the issue of agreeing on funding for fiscal year 2014, starting just three weeks ago and will end on September 30^th. The original spending request was issued by Barack Obama on April 10^th 2013. Fiscal year 2014 must be enacted by both houses of congress before they can take affect (sadly) in accordance with the United States budget process. (Frame work used by congress and the president of the United States to formulate and create the United States federal Budget.) Even though the deadline is set for September 30^th, lawmakers have until mid January until the current round of temporary government funding is expired to sort it all out until another possible shutdown happens. (Though the hilarious jokes that could be made about the situation itself, it has a vast and harmful impact to several things that without the government could not be tended to, i.e. zoos, national parks, ect.)

Right now there are two numbers floating about that could mark the chances for a deal: $967 billion and $1.058 trillion (though both had budget cuts that took place in sometime around March.) Individually the $967 billion is funding for defense and a non defense program that House Republicans have called for, though republicans would lean that money more towards non defense programs, called under law of course.  The $1.058 trillion is what the Senate Democrats have proposed and where spending would be if the sequester were canceled for 2014. Democrats have stated that this large sum of money will be made up through tax increases and other spending cuts as always. 

Right now the government is being funded temporarily until January 15^th at an annualized amount of $986 billion. Of course if nothing gets done there will be a $20 billion automatic cut which of course is being found unappealing to Republicans because it would hit defense most heavily. With Democrats they find it hard to take in because allowing that second round of cuts to occur all but codifies the sequester as a fact of life.(Basically if the sequester is replaced the republicans will find equal saving through entitlement cuts and that’s a no from democrats who will only agree to entitlement cuts if the revenue matches the increase which draws a no from republicans.) Everyone get ready it’s time for shutdown number two.

Childless Adults Deserve Aid Aswell

          The biggest obstacle to health insurance remains the refusal of 26 (mostly Republican-led) states to expand their Medicaid programs called for under the health reform law. As a result, up to eight million people will get no help at all because they earn too little to buy coverage on the new insurance exchanges and too much to qualify for Medicaid in states that won’t expand their programs. Many of the excluded are poor children and their parents. Most, however, are childless adults, generally defined as those age 19 to 64 without dependent children. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, at least four million childless adults living near or below the poverty line will be denied. Of those, 60 percent are men. They are part of a population of 26 million impoverished adults in the United States, of whom 16 million are childless. Traditionally government anti-poverty programs have largely ignored childless adults under the rationale that only children, their parents, older Americans and the disabled are deserving of help. The sheer number of childless adults in poverty defies that notion, as does compassion and economic necessity; an economy cannot thrive with a significant share of the working-age population stuck in poverty in all honesty. That is why one of health reform’s greatest goals is to extend Medicaid to all low-income childless adults with the federal government paying all of the costs for three years and at least 90 percent after that. The refusal of many states to go along undermines that important step forward sadly.

          The system fails to meet the needs of the poor and childless in other ways, including food stamps. Food stamps benefit the unemployed childless adults, to three months out of every three years. An exception lets unemployed childless workers receive food stamps if they are enrolled in a job-training program, but many people cannot get into job training because federal money for such programs is extremely limited. The rules that govern food stamps should be based on evidence of need, not on arbitrary judgments about who is needy based on family assumption. Looming cutbacks to state and federal unemployment benefits will also harm many childless low-income adults because many who lose their jobs end up unemployed for a long time. In today’s high-unemployment, low-wage and deeply unequal economy, childless adults are not immune to severe hardship and should not be disqualified from help to have the basic necessities to live.

Drama in the Government (again but with more media)

    The United States became a superpower in the 1930s and, 80 years later, stands on the brink of losing that status. It rose to global standings at short notice, and its decline can occur just as abruptly. The partial government shutdown both reminds us that the United States has reached such a precarious position and shows us exactly how things can now unravel as it approaches the really big confrontation over the debt ceiling. Isolationism was a powerful idea in the 1930s and through 1940’s the United States felt burned by its involvement in World War I. The United States had created a vast military, won victories around the world and tipped the balance in the largest global conflict that we know of. All of this was based on the political decisions that while the nation should be careful with government finances, it was acceptable to borrow heavily under extreme circumstances. Smart financial understandings and when it should come under play helped to establish the United States economic standings. Now really stupid fiscal policy threatens to bring the United States down.

    The primary cause of any public money problem is not the ability of people to pay their taxes, it’s their willingness to pay their taxes or, as in the current situation in the United States, the willingness of their elected representatives to finance the government. This willingness is always tied closely to the truthful actions of the government and what they are able to perform. Does enough of the population think that the people with political power won it in a fair manner and are they willing to accept policies with which they do not necessarily agree? Sounds oh so similar to so many government dilemmas and issues we’ve all had with the financial dealings with the government I would have to say. It’s funny enough that our own economic growth applied to the partial government shutdown or not, can have much more of an effect than say the decline of foreign dealings. 

    The United States faces a serious fiscal crisis not because of the partial government shutdown exactly, but rather because of what those experiences indicate what will be considered acceptable for other countries to establish positive relationships with us. Today’s optimists are those who think the current partial government shutdown will allow the Republican Party to work out some internal issues. Realists also like to point out that when the United States has big financial dilemmas it tends to destabilize the rest of the world more than it hurts the United States. If the common business man cannot speak truth to the Republican Party  and convince the person in charge and enough members of Congress to return to how it used to be there is not much hope for the United States in today’s global economy sadly, though that’s what I personally think.