With my deepest apologies to Jim Croce:
“Now I got them steadily depressin’
low-down, mind-messin’
governmental shutdown blues.”
By the time you read this, it’ll be pretty much a month since our fearless leaders decided to build snow forts and lob rhetorical snowballs at each other over funding the government, while the rest of us wander through the no-citizens’ land dodging the stupidity while trying to understand just why 536 folks feel our money is something to spend willy-nilly.
This shutdown has entered schoolyard territory is what I’m saying. Sadly, the elected folks in Congress want to spend a lot of money on health care subsidies, and a lot of that for illegal aliens (undocumented is such an attempt at deflection).
President Trump has opted to let Congress be Congress, but not without his signature trolling. The White House has a shutdown clock — one that doesn’t attempt an explanation but just tracks the amount of time the government is not governmenting.
There have been 12 votes on funding government for a bit, and even an attempt to pass a bill to pay federal employees until the funding issues are dealt with has crashed and burned.
In the meantime, there are a lot of folks worried about things like eating. Social Security and SSI payments will be made (new applications will take more time), and Medicaid and Medicare will not stop (these programs’ administration will take a hit), but SNAP benefits will be affected the longer the shutdown continues.
However, I’m really not sure that the bulk of what the government is trying to fund is constitutionally mandated, since there’s no articles that allow health care or food assistance. But even that standoff would be solved if it wasn’t for the congresscritters not wanting to compromise.
For so long, members of the government (an a case could be made for any level of government) have looked at their election not as a way to represent their constituents, but to lead them. So-called bright minds with passionate ideas feel that government working for everyone means government must create subsections of society and then toss money and programs at them, all in the name of leadership.
Anyone with any sense, though, can see the country has become mired in massive debt, parts of society in direct opposition to others, and the only people who truly have benefitted from the government are the members of the government, who have become millionaires while regular folks struggle more and more.
That’s the chief insult; you’re being told this is for the best and for your own good and we all need to come together to help the less fortunate, and there never seems to be any less less-fortunate. So, where’s my representative government?
This isn’t a problem with a specific party, even though the Senate Democrats are the ones gumming up the funding works (while laying the blame at the president’s feet) in this iteration of shutdown.
I promise you, though, that we’re the ones suffering, not our representatives.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
