The Budget and the Almost Government Shut Down

Okay so as with any post, my disclaimer still applies. Which by the way will be shown in full under my blog name in full, well once I finish it anyways. So let me restate the portion that seems to have struck some as funny... "if you are easily offended or do not appreciate the versatility of the word "fuck" you may want to stop now."

So off to the ramblings.

I find myself a little irritated over this budget thing. Not just because of the fact that had the government shut down I would have been without pay until they unfucked themselves but more along the lines of how people are reacting to it.

Let me just point out one thing for you to ponder on. The Democraps held both the House and the Senate last fiscal year. Now by all accounts they were supposed to come up with a budget before fiscal year 2011 began, which was in October. So isn't part of the blame to be placed on them? I mean, really. Mid-term elections come in, the Tea Party gets their foot in the door and BOOM, now they have the opportunity to cause problems with this budget which should have been in place months ago. So for everyone bitching about those Republicants and Tea Baggers, well the Democraps gave them the opportunity to throw in their two cents.

Now I'm not taking sides here. I can't stand either party because I think way too many on both sides aren't really looking out for the best interests of their constituents. I've written my Congressman and my Senator on numerous occasions for various different things. Each time I have requested a written response. How many have I received you ask? Well let me tell you! Not one. Not a single written response for any of my questions, groans, moans, or complaints. Not even a one liner that says something like, "We are reviewing your question and will get back to you when we have an answer." NOTHING. In my eyes this is an epic fail. I understand that the man in charge there may not have the time to reply to each of his constituents, HOWEVER, (pause for effect) they have a staff that should be able to speak on their behalf. So the fact that apparently I'm not important enough or do not deserve a response really gets under my skin.

I digress. As for the budget crisis. If we think this one is bad, lets see how it goes when they start negotiating the fiscal year 2012 budget. Which if they have a thread of common sense between any of them they will start working on immediately following the passage of this one. It's going to be a whopper. I would encourage all of you to pay close attention to it and more importantly pay attention to the riders that they are trying to throw in with it. A rider is like a condition. For example, a big bone of contention with this one was, Planned Parenthood. The condition or rider, for government money going to Planned Parenthood was that they were not allowed to spend any federal funds on anything that could be diverted or used for abortions. Now we all know that even though Planned Parenthood claims not to fund abortions directly that they have a means of indirect compensation. With that being said this rider can pretty much defund Planned Parenthood. This is just one example. These are the things that stop progress in negotiations.

The spending conditions do more than that, they divert funds and in some cases force the receiving party to spend these funds a certain way. An example of this was the billions of dollars the Pentagon received to purchase back up engines for the Joint Strike Fighter. The back up engines cost nearly as much as the plane with the original engine. This was one of those moves where members of congress were trying to push money into their state because that's where components of the back up engine were made. As a side note, the Pentagon tried at several junctions to turn this money away because they didn't want or need the back up engine. Pretty crazy huh?

So as we move from one budget crisis to another I encourage you to pay attention to what our politicians are doing. It doesn't matter if you voted for them or not. They are there representing you in the government.

At this point I'd like to take the time to advertise for a friend of mine who is one of the developers of a political website that is for the people, not the politicians. Here you can participate with ranking and finding out information about your respective politicians. Now this site is still under construction because there is a LOT of politicians, but still check it out.

http://www.politicasts.com/

Thats all for now....

Oh yeah, this blog is still in it's infancy and I'm working on it along with many other projects so be patient and keep checking it out.

The Senator