Browsing: government shutdown

The conclusion of the shutdown episode has brought a flurry of analysis and harsh criticism of Congress. But there’s something missing in it all. As tempting as it might sound to fire all of our elected leaders, it isn’t just Congress who needs to step up to avoid another government shutdown. It’s our responsibility too.

Up against a deadline, Congress passed and sent a waiting President Barack Obama legislation late Wednesday night to avoid a threatened national default and end the 16-day partial government shutdown, the culmination of an epic political drama that placed the U.S. economy at risk.

As the government shutdown continues, America is realizing exactly how much the government manages. While Republicans and Democrats continue to bicker and argue, America is paying the price of this temper tantrum though several avenues.

The shutdown is supposed to prevent non-essential spending, but this isn’t happening in all cases. The servers that host government websites are still running, but they are redirecting to a shutdown page. It would have made more sense, if the government wanted to really save money, to shut down the servers to federal websites. It isn’t saving the government any money to block these websites. They’re only annoying the American people.

The U.S. government has shut down, yet the country largely continues to run as usual. The world didn’t end and the economy did not come to a crashing halt.

Americans need to realize that there is only one party that deserves the lion’s share of the blame for the shutdown: the Democrats.

This shutdown has been years in the making. Until March 23 of this year, the Democrat-controlled Senate failed to even vote on a budget for more than four years, and they have yet to send a budget to the White House as of this writing. That is gross negligence to do the job to which they were elected.

The Army Corps of Engineers closed six Lake Waco parks Tuesday as a result of Monday’s gridlock in Congress that resulted in a partial government shutdown.

Midway Park, Speegleville Park, Airport Park, Koehne Park, Bosque Park and Twin Bridges Park all closed indefinitely, said Randy Cephus, the deputy public affairs officer for the Fort Worth District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.