For the record, "The Grand Daily" is currently a figure of speech more than an actual delivery schedule. But a little more product should be shoved onto these digital shelves, to be sure. It's a work in progress.
When this post was initially named, government shutdown was a likely, but not realized cliff over which the United States was peering. Domestic affairs were for the moment secondary to international attention: newsworthiness ranged week to week from Egypt (completely ignored by the media by this point) to Syria (equally forgotten since the -inspectors returned in what continues to be startling analogous to Iraq pre-2003).
But, as the cliche goes, time makes fools of us all, and the most dangerous threat came from within. Here we find ourselves, fallen from one cliff and ready to jump off another. Taking a broader view, Congress has been jumping off more cliffs than an annual base-jumping team, which this author believes may be a suitably improved brand for the clusterfuck that currently claims to represent the country.
The funny thing is, in hindsight, it's all too obvious. This story began in 2011, when this author was still a contractor for the Federal Government (working on the FAA NEXTGEN program at the time, and hating every moment). For those who have opted to spend their attention elsewhere, allow the following to catch you up.
In July of 2011, the time of the year had come around for Congress to raise the debt ceiling for (roughly) another year-- this being the official estimate by the U.S. Treasury, who operate as the nation's internal accountants.
At this time Congress (or to be more accurate, the House of Representatives), the Republican Party having recently reclaimed a majority, decided to use this opportunity to flex their muscles as deficit hawks. Or, in plainer English, they seized the opportunity to demand a reduction in the deficit of the Federal budget.
Not to treat any potential readers with mittens, but the Deficit is the annual difference between what the country budgets (and then spends) and what its revenues are. Income - Spending = Deficit (or a surplus if that number is positive, as it was in the 1990's under Bill Clinton before the Bush Tax Cuts,).
The Debt is a scary ~17 trillion dollar figure which is the accumulation of monies owed by the United States government. Deficit hawks (a figure of speech for individuals who are aggressively vocal about the need to reign in spending) sometimes use the rhetorical tool that everyone in the nation, from grandparents to infants, own a personal share of ~$50,000 of that debt. While this sounds like a lot, consider: 1. this is a lifetime debt, not something that will be due in one, two, or ten years (and this nation, hopefully, has a long, long lifetime), and 2. this also ignores revenue streams such as the corporate tax rate, which, while grossly flawed, does redistribute the weight of this burden. All of this is to say, yes debt it a problem, but the sky is not falling nearly as fast as some of those scary numbers, and the deficit hawks who use them, might imply.
Let this be perfectly clear: raising the debt limit is analogous to receiving an increase in a personal credit limit, but NOT to granting permission for a spending spree. The spending spree would be more accurately compared to the construction of the annual budget, which Congress also (separately) approves.
So this was already a move of poor form: radical elements from the "Tea Party" refused to raise the debt limit, which is usually a procedural and ordinary happenstance. Awful, right?
Unfortunately, President Obama, as a Senator, once did the same thing in 2006. The debt limit was being raised, and he voted against doing so, making a speech about the irresponsibility of the Bush Administration and its spending habits, which produced an enormous deficit within its eight years. He knew it was going to be passed, and that nothing would come of it, so this was a moment of political grandstanding. And now people doing the exact same thing, in greater numbers, are causing an economic calamity. Awkward.
So what happens if the debt ceiling doesn't get raised? Well, legally the United States government would not have the authority to borrow any more money, and barring a "continuing resolution (CR) government services would thus have to shut down. The CR has been the modus operandi for keeping the Federal Government going under the Obama Administration, because it 1. keeps all agencies funded at their current level and 2. is much easier to pass politically, as a short term fix. That's how bad Congressional gridlock (inability for Congress to do anything) has been: they've been operating on temporary budgets for years now, including when the Democrats still had the majority in BOTH houses of Congress in 2009-10. Fail.
There is a crazy legal maneuver out there where the President could mint a coin of infinite value, or something like it, and that's Constitutional. That's how absurd things have gotten, and I'm not going to get into that right now.
Political negotiations went to the literal 11th hour, and minutes before an official imminent government shutdown, a compromise was reached and passed: the Budget Control Act of 2011. What this did was pass a budget for the year without details, but a requirement that a new budget be compiled by a "Super Committee", who would be tasked with responsibly cutting 900 billion dollars from the national deficit over ten years, which would pretty quickly stabilize the national level of debt.
If this grand "Super Committee" could not, over the course of several months, agree to a proposed budget, then something called "sequestration" would go into effect. Sequestration, sometimes called sequester, is the automatic, across the board cuts to both Defense spending and non-Defense budgets (the prior being sacrosanct to the GOP, the latter being protected by the political left).
The idea of the sequester was that it would be So Stupid that they could not possibly let it happen, and Congress would force itself into compromise. This was pretty close to its official description. So guess what happened? Was Congress so stupid to allow sequestration, the thing they intentionally made to be stupid?
Of course.
The Super Committee failed brilliantly, and horrid cuts (which conservatives like John McCain warned could put national security in peril) were made. The idea had been to use a scalpel instead of the sledge hammer, and Congress opted for the sledge. Well done. What's been cut? Things like WIC (a nutrition program for women and infant and children). Political home runs. They opted to not only stop kissing babies, but kick them in the gut.
The NIH (the National Institute of Health) was cut as well. The nation's best cancer research, disease study and pharmaceutical science arena has been crippled.
What's more, as a result of the political strife, S&P downgraded the United State's Treasury Bills (T-Bills). S&P is responsible for basically saying how safe an investment is, and U.S T-Bills were (forgive the pun) the gold standard, AAA rated. Now, due to the political risk of having a party that has embraced the risk of default, the proud rating has declined to AA. Funny enough, the economic dip that occurred because of this resulted in MORE T-Bills being purchased, because the markets became unstable and T-Bills are still considered reliably safe investments.
As anyone who has ever been in debt knows all too well, climbing out of debt takes some time and patience. It doesn't happen overnight, and even the sequestration takes ten years to completely eliminate the deficit (which has, indeed, plummeted).
But then, the debt limit came back, like that outbreak of herpes you thought was gone for good. And this October, it flared back up.
This time, the CR was going to need to be passed around the time that ObamaCare (or, as those who know what it's actually called, The Affordable Health Care for America Act) was going to go into effect. And the GOP, who control one house in a bicameral Congress, decided that some of its components need to be delayed, or they would NOT vote for a budget.
They've voted for a few budgets, but all of them have attempted to rescind, repeal, delay, or defund ObamaCare, a centerpiece of the Obama Administration on which they spent enormous political capital (think of this as popularity points, and there are a finite number). Guess how many times they've tried to do this before? Seeing as we have a resulting government shutdown, just take a stab? 3? 4? 5?
42. The answer to the universe. Douglas Adams would roll in his grave, to see that 41 times prior they had tried to do this.
The Senate, still held by the Democrats, absolutely will not pass a CR with an attachment that demands repealing The AHCAA. And every CR that the House keeps putting out there has included this.
So the Government shut down.
NASA shut down 97% of their operations. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson why this is a bad thing.
The monuments shut down, causing a publicity stir. Because of trash, vandalism, etc, the monuments have been officially closed-- difficult decisions made by low-ranking bureaucrats abiding by necessities of the shutdown. The Republicans have not only used the WWII veterans as political props, but they've had the gall to blame the Democrats for the shutdown, and implied conspiracies by the President and his party.
And now we are days, HOURS away from default. Where we truly have not enough money to pay Social Security, to pay for T Bills. Defaulting on either one will be an economic calamity which will require another article.
When this post was initially named, government shutdown was a likely, but not realized cliff over which the United States was peering. Domestic affairs were for the moment secondary to international attention: newsworthiness ranged week to week from Egypt (completely ignored by the media by this point) to Syria (equally forgotten since the -inspectors returned in what continues to be startling analogous to Iraq pre-2003).
But, as the cliche goes, time makes fools of us all, and the most dangerous threat came from within. Here we find ourselves, fallen from one cliff and ready to jump off another. Taking a broader view, Congress has been jumping off more cliffs than an annual base-jumping team, which this author believes may be a suitably improved brand for the clusterfuck that currently claims to represent the country.
The funny thing is, in hindsight, it's all too obvious. This story began in 2011, when this author was still a contractor for the Federal Government (working on the FAA NEXTGEN program at the time, and hating every moment). For those who have opted to spend their attention elsewhere, allow the following to catch you up.
In July of 2011, the time of the year had come around for Congress to raise the debt ceiling for (roughly) another year-- this being the official estimate by the U.S. Treasury, who operate as the nation's internal accountants.
At this time Congress (or to be more accurate, the House of Representatives), the Republican Party having recently reclaimed a majority, decided to use this opportunity to flex their muscles as deficit hawks. Or, in plainer English, they seized the opportunity to demand a reduction in the deficit of the Federal budget.
Not to treat any potential readers with mittens, but the Deficit is the annual difference between what the country budgets (and then spends) and what its revenues are. Income - Spending = Deficit (or a surplus if that number is positive, as it was in the 1990's under Bill Clinton before the Bush Tax Cuts,).
The Debt is a scary ~17 trillion dollar figure which is the accumulation of monies owed by the United States government. Deficit hawks (a figure of speech for individuals who are aggressively vocal about the need to reign in spending) sometimes use the rhetorical tool that everyone in the nation, from grandparents to infants, own a personal share of ~$50,000 of that debt. While this sounds like a lot, consider: 1. this is a lifetime debt, not something that will be due in one, two, or ten years (and this nation, hopefully, has a long, long lifetime), and 2. this also ignores revenue streams such as the corporate tax rate, which, while grossly flawed, does redistribute the weight of this burden. All of this is to say, yes debt it a problem, but the sky is not falling nearly as fast as some of those scary numbers, and the deficit hawks who use them, might imply.
Let this be perfectly clear: raising the debt limit is analogous to receiving an increase in a personal credit limit, but NOT to granting permission for a spending spree. The spending spree would be more accurately compared to the construction of the annual budget, which Congress also (separately) approves.
So this was already a move of poor form: radical elements from the "Tea Party" refused to raise the debt limit, which is usually a procedural and ordinary happenstance. Awful, right?
Unfortunately, President Obama, as a Senator, once did the same thing in 2006. The debt limit was being raised, and he voted against doing so, making a speech about the irresponsibility of the Bush Administration and its spending habits, which produced an enormous deficit within its eight years. He knew it was going to be passed, and that nothing would come of it, so this was a moment of political grandstanding. And now people doing the exact same thing, in greater numbers, are causing an economic calamity. Awkward.
So what happens if the debt ceiling doesn't get raised? Well, legally the United States government would not have the authority to borrow any more money, and barring a "continuing resolution (CR) government services would thus have to shut down. The CR has been the modus operandi for keeping the Federal Government going under the Obama Administration, because it 1. keeps all agencies funded at their current level and 2. is much easier to pass politically, as a short term fix. That's how bad Congressional gridlock (inability for Congress to do anything) has been: they've been operating on temporary budgets for years now, including when the Democrats still had the majority in BOTH houses of Congress in 2009-10. Fail.
There is a crazy legal maneuver out there where the President could mint a coin of infinite value, or something like it, and that's Constitutional. That's how absurd things have gotten, and I'm not going to get into that right now.
Political negotiations went to the literal 11th hour, and minutes before an official imminent government shutdown, a compromise was reached and passed: the Budget Control Act of 2011. What this did was pass a budget for the year without details, but a requirement that a new budget be compiled by a "Super Committee", who would be tasked with responsibly cutting 900 billion dollars from the national deficit over ten years, which would pretty quickly stabilize the national level of debt.
If this grand "Super Committee" could not, over the course of several months, agree to a proposed budget, then something called "sequestration" would go into effect. Sequestration, sometimes called sequester, is the automatic, across the board cuts to both Defense spending and non-Defense budgets (the prior being sacrosanct to the GOP, the latter being protected by the political left).
The idea of the sequester was that it would be So Stupid that they could not possibly let it happen, and Congress would force itself into compromise. This was pretty close to its official description. So guess what happened? Was Congress so stupid to allow sequestration, the thing they intentionally made to be stupid?
Of course.
The Super Committee failed brilliantly, and horrid cuts (which conservatives like John McCain warned could put national security in peril) were made. The idea had been to use a scalpel instead of the sledge hammer, and Congress opted for the sledge. Well done. What's been cut? Things like WIC (a nutrition program for women and infant and children). Political home runs. They opted to not only stop kissing babies, but kick them in the gut.
The NIH (the National Institute of Health) was cut as well. The nation's best cancer research, disease study and pharmaceutical science arena has been crippled.
What's more, as a result of the political strife, S&P downgraded the United State's Treasury Bills (T-Bills). S&P is responsible for basically saying how safe an investment is, and U.S T-Bills were (forgive the pun) the gold standard, AAA rated. Now, due to the political risk of having a party that has embraced the risk of default, the proud rating has declined to AA. Funny enough, the economic dip that occurred because of this resulted in MORE T-Bills being purchased, because the markets became unstable and T-Bills are still considered reliably safe investments.
As anyone who has ever been in debt knows all too well, climbing out of debt takes some time and patience. It doesn't happen overnight, and even the sequestration takes ten years to completely eliminate the deficit (which has, indeed, plummeted).
But then, the debt limit came back, like that outbreak of herpes you thought was gone for good. And this October, it flared back up.
This time, the CR was going to need to be passed around the time that ObamaCare (or, as those who know what it's actually called, The Affordable Health Care for America Act) was going to go into effect. And the GOP, who control one house in a bicameral Congress, decided that some of its components need to be delayed, or they would NOT vote for a budget.
They've voted for a few budgets, but all of them have attempted to rescind, repeal, delay, or defund ObamaCare, a centerpiece of the Obama Administration on which they spent enormous political capital (think of this as popularity points, and there are a finite number). Guess how many times they've tried to do this before? Seeing as we have a resulting government shutdown, just take a stab? 3? 4? 5?
42. The answer to the universe. Douglas Adams would roll in his grave, to see that 41 times prior they had tried to do this.
The Senate, still held by the Democrats, absolutely will not pass a CR with an attachment that demands repealing The AHCAA. And every CR that the House keeps putting out there has included this.
So the Government shut down.
The monuments shut down, causing a publicity stir. Because of trash, vandalism, etc, the monuments have been officially closed-- difficult decisions made by low-ranking bureaucrats abiding by necessities of the shutdown. The Republicans have not only used the WWII veterans as political props, but they've had the gall to blame the Democrats for the shutdown, and implied conspiracies by the President and his party.
And now we are days, HOURS away from default. Where we truly have not enough money to pay Social Security, to pay for T Bills. Defaulting on either one will be an economic calamity which will require another article.
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