September 26th, 2011 Congress Comes to an Agreement on Extending the Federal Budget
Earlier this year on April 8th, the Federal Budget approched its limits, and the government faced a shutdown that would last for an unknown amount of time. If this occured, then thousands of government workers would be temporarily unemployed and those in the military would not be payed until the end of the shutdown. Less than 60 minutes before the 12:01 AM shutdown time, the House Dems and Reps came to an agreement to cut about $40 billion from the budget. Although they averted the shutdown, the time extension wasnt very long at all.
This problem loomed over the Senate again earlier this week, as they met to vote on a bill which would create a seven-week extension of the Federal Budget. The Senate voted, and the bill was passed 72 yes to 12 no, 9 Senators didnt vote. Out of the 72 yes votes, 51 were Democrats, and all of those who voted No and those who didnt vote at all were Republican.
All this bill does is gives the Senate more time to come up with a more long term solution. That solution, in the past, has been to just extend the debt ceiling. In August of this year, the Senate passed a bill by 74-26 which extended the debt ceiling by $400 billion, and made two new steps for future ceiling extensions to more than $2.1 trillion. Although they plan on almost $1 trillion in government debt reduction measures between 2012 and 2021, this doesnt seem to be working well enough, or fast enough. Who really knows what is going to be done next time the limit is reached, but based on recent events, one might be able to hazard a good guess.
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/senate/1/153
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20052351-503544.html
http://www.housingwire.com/2011/08/02/senate-passes-debt-limit-extension
Hi Ian. I like your fish. I take credit for showing them to you, but i still like them. My fish are better though because they represent the population of the US by race. So HAH! :D
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ReplyDeletePeople are angry at Congress for not getting anything done, and they know for a fact it's all because of the bi-partisan deadlock.
ReplyDeleteIn this coming election, power is gonna go all one way or all the other. I'm leaning towards the democrats here.
While I agree that raising the debt ceiling isn't really doing much to avert the crisis, at least the government isn't shutting down. In my mind, something is better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteAs further elaborated in my article, over-partisanship and the general misconception that discussing issues is adequate has resulted in very little headway in government legislation. Progress is certainly preferable to a shutdown, though if Senators could approach issues with greater impartiality (purely idealistic, I know), such a deadlock could be avoided.
ReplyDeleteThis deadlock is actually unavoidable. The current government is centered on political gridlock and anyone can see we are hyper pluralist at the moment. You could say that the past few decades the government has been in constant deadlock and a practical shutdown. The legislation that has recently been past has conceded on so many terms that they are practically changing nothing and is infused with so many conflicting concepts that they might as well just have ended Congress after a single day in session and gone on vacation. The only time that things get accomplished is when they are desperately needed. Basically, our government is in a, in football terms, prevent defense until the opponent gets to the red zone. When they get to the red zone we go all out with various exotic blitz spontaneously created by the defensive coordinator.
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