Close it Down, Who Cares?

 

                                                       Will Rogers 

 

 There is talk of shutting down the government. Both sides are so far apart that unless they sacrifice everything they believe in, or have said on every talking head show on TV, they will have to. I have a quote from Dirty Harry for all of them. "Go Ahead, Make My Day". Lets see who can live without government assistance the longest. The rich, the dwindling middle class, or the desperate poor like the family above who are living in their car. My money's on the poor, what else can they lose?

 

 With Obama and the leaders in congress willing to cut 33 billion  from a proposed budget, this isn't good enough for the republicans, especially the teaparty candidates who were elected blowing steam about cutting the budget so much that it will be manageable in just a few years.They propose cutting 61 billion on the backs of the poor. It took eight years for Bush/Cheney to make it this large in the first place, yet they want a balanced budget now. Where is the common sense that at one time the members of congress had, even after the theatrics and threats. 

 

According to the Washington Post, between 1977 and 1980 the government was shut down six times. Nine more from 81' to 96' with the last one occurring in December 95' to early January 96'. This is the one I remember well. It was "Big Bubba" Bill Clinton and the democratic party against those pesky republicans. I remember thinking, who will blink first? Well, it was the republicans and they were blamed for the entire situation by popular opinion and paid for it dearly in the next election.

 

But I also remember that is was the rich, the ones who are in the game of making money off the government in every way imaginable, who caved. They could care less about the budget, as was proved by the previous administrations extraordinary catering to them. While the middle class was hurting, they were not the ones who were yelling as loud as the rich. As for the poor, if you have nothing anyway, what does it matter what they shut down. You're eating at a soup kitchen either way. 

 

Now, the rich have their eyes trained on Medicare and Medicaid and even the Holy Grail itself, Social Security has been mentioned. I can never figure out the rich. Cut Medicare or Medicaid and people, kids and the elderly mostly, get sick. They then have to go to the only place that the poor can go, the emergency room. This in turn costs the federal government more money because they subsidize the hospitals that cannot turn away the poor. It is a merry-go-round that never stops except to throw the poor off at some place on the bad side of town. 

 

We send million dollar rockets to knock out one tank in Libya. We've spent 500 billion dollars in Afghanistan and they hate us now more than ten years ago when we invaded them. Iraq, who knows, we seem to have forgotten we still have 50 thousand soldiers there that still have to be fed, clothed and armed at a cost of billions.  So for God's sake, don't mess with the defense budget. Let's just keep soldiers all over the world, Germany, Korea, Japan, etc., etc., etc. They say Rome wasn't built in a day. It also didn't fall in a day. If we continue to be the worlds police and at the same time treat our less fortunate as trash, I for one will be glad I'm not around for the end game.