Tuesday marked the first day of a limited government shutdown and despite Republican attempts to blame the shut down on Democrats in Congress and President Barack Obama, the reality of the situation tells a completely different story.
The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is blaming the shutdown on Democrats, stating that they merely want a chance to negotiate on points about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which evidently do not have enough merit to stand on their own in a separate bill, hence the extortion/kidnapping of the U.S. economy by the GOP via a government shutdown.
It must be made clear, this continuing resolution is for a mere six weeks; the whole reason for a six week extension is to allow time for well-reasoned negotiation on the federal budget through September 30, 2014. Negotiation is implicit in the passage of the bill, and republicans know this.
Of course, negotiation is the furthest thing from the republican agenda. According to the Maddow blog, they had a chance to form a conference committee between the two chambers of Congress to discuss budget differences five months ago, but Republican Speaker John Boehner refused to send anyone from the House to meet their Senate counterparts.
In fact, NPR reported Tuesday that over the past six months Republicans have refused in 18 separate attempts to form a conference committee with the Senate on budget negotiations.
Even the republicans in the U.S. Senate are not completely free of blame. Though it is true that Senate republicans did not filibuster a clean continuing resolution to fund the government, none of the republicans in the Senate voted “yea” on the final up-and-down vote. Had they voted for the bill, it may have taken at least some the wind out of the far right faction within the U.S. House.
If House republicans truly want to negotiate, then the Senate’s ‘no-strings’ funding bill should fit perfectly into their plan; after all, it only extends funding of the government for six weeks. Over this period, democrats and republicans would have the opportunity negotiate a permanent solution for the 2014 budget. However, seeing as House Republicans could not even make it to the table over a six-month period, if they could do so in six weeks it would be a miraculous feat indeed.
