You may not have known this, but we were on the brink of disaster on October 1st. While most people’s minds are focused on Halloween, which is a holiday where scary fun can be had by all. But Leftists focused on this recent scary date where the government could have shut down. To a Leftist, that concept is scarier than every “Saw” movie combined.
When there’s even a hint of a government shutdown, Leftists lose their minds and start coming up with all sorts of doomsday scenarios. Our military will be scaled back, leaving us defenseless. Old people won’t get their monthly checks, causing them to starve and die. Worst of all, though…”The View” might get renewed for another season!
But if it weren’t for the actions of some plucky political officials, we would be running around with pollution everywhere, cities on fire, and utter chaos. In other words, San Francisco on any given day.
Since the can got kicked down the road until mid-November, we have some time to relax and think more about what a government shutdown actually means.
government shutdown
What the Left thinks it means – holding the country hostage fiscally so a group of right wing extremists get what they want
What it really means – an exercise showing how bloated the federal government has gotten and what can/should be cut without affecting our everyday lives
In the interests of transparency, I am a small government advocate. I know! Shocking, isn’t it? The reason for my position is pretty simple: a smaller government is an accountable government. Right now, Congresscritters can pass whatever bills they want so full of pork both the B’nai B’rith and Muslim organizations reject it on religious grounds. Try pulling that shit when the only thing between you and an angry mob is a receptionist’s desk.
Since I seem to be in the minority on this, I’ve come to understand why some people want a larger government. I don’t like it, but I understand it. And it really comes down to one thing: people today want to be ruled rather than governed. It’s easier to let someone else tackle the big stuff so we can go back to obsessing about pumpkin spice this and TikTok that and celebrity gossip the other thing. Keeping informed is just too hard, guys! And it’s boring! So, why not just let the government run everything so we can focus on the really important stuff?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, we’re being run by powerful idiots who make bad decisions on the regular. Like not having an actual budget for, oh, decades now. That’s right! Our federal government has not passed a budget since 1996. The way we’ve kept the lights on in Washington, DC, has been through either Continuing Resolutions (basically a legislative method to kick the can down the road in the hopes someone else will pass a budget) or through omnibus spending bills (basically a legislative method to kick the can down the road in the hopes someone else will pick up the tab for their expenditures).
In short, we’re fucked. And neither the Left nor the Right have any plans to unfuck us. But only one side really goes out of its way to turn their collective fiscal irresponsibility into a horror show where everyone is a victim. I’ll give you three guesses, and all three are “Leftists.”
See, Leftists have this unshakable faith in the government as the source of all good in the world. If the government doesn’t do a particular task, Leftists will find a way to wedge the government in there, which creates layer upon layer of bureaucracy. And over time, that bureaucracy grows and becomes more essential to the task until the two are permanently stuck together like my fingers when I try to use Crazy Glue.
And with that Amazing Colossal Bureaucracy comes job opportunities for Leftists, as well as money from said government drones and power over the rest of us. So, when there’s the threat of the government shutting down, it starves the bureaucracy and curtails the power it wields. To the Left, that’s the worst possible thing that could happen. To me, it’s threatening me with a good time.
It should be pointed out government shutdowns have become a political football for the Left and the Right for the past several years. Of these, 13 occurred under a Republican President, while the remaining 8 happened with a Democrat in the White House. Although both major parties shared the blame early on, Republicans took the majority of the blame for the more recent shutdowns because, well, the Left told us they were to blame and enough people believed them.
And because they were right, even if only half so. Both parties are to blame for not being able to pay the country’s bills, mainly because they’re the ones running up the budget to pay for things like non-existent aircraft, wrenches and toilet seats that cost more than the GDP of most of Africa, and really stupid expenditures.
Like more money going to Ukraine.
Yes, kids, the House Democrats weren’t willing to bend much on sending more money to a country we’re supporting in a war between two countries where their leaders are corrupt, dishonest men. Meanwhile, House Republicans wanted money to go towards disaster relief because, as the residents of East Palestine and Maui will tell you, the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration hasn’t done jack shit to help them.
Whenever government shutdowns loom larger than Michael Moore’s shadow, both sides always call for “clean bills,” which is a euphemism for “a bill that pays for everything we want while fucking over the other side.” Between that and the complaints about how many pages the proposed spending bill is, it’s amazing anything gets done at all because both sides would rather play chicken with our tax dollars than come up with an actual budget to constrain costs as much as any federal budget can.
But in the end, both sides know a government shutdown is more theatrical than fiscal. The Left will run sob story after sob story about some lower level drone who won’t get paid and, thus, will go hungry. The Right will complain about how little was cut, but how they had to surrender like the French when there was a minute amount of pushback from the Left.
And the rest of us go on living life as normal for the most part. I’ve been alive for each of the government shutdowns I mentioned above, and not once have the doomsday scenarios painted by the Left ever happened. Even the longer ones didn’t affect most people.
That’s one of the dirty secrets of government shutdowns: the programs the Left always paint as being on the verge of collapse due to the shutdown are usually scheduled to be paid without interruption. And the government employees who lose their jobs when there’s a shutdown? They still get paid after the fact.
Which means…it’s all a show that we’re paying for, but not really enjoying. So, like “Two and a Half Men” on demand, only without the demand part.
The thing to remember whenever a government shutdown is threatened is most people know how to get by even better without the government than they do with it. This may be my small government bias talking (or just common sense), but the fact we don’t need much government should tell both sides maybe we don’t need to spend so much on their services. But that would mean they would have to willingly give up the money and power they get by having the government’s tentacles in every aspect of our lives, sometimes several times over.
Anything short of a full scale fire-and-rehire movement on Capitol Hill won’t prevent a government shutdown going forward. However, I do have a way for us to save some money doing something both sides like to do, but don’t like to admit.
That’s right. Outsourcing Congress to India.
At this point, anything’s worth a shot.
