Color me shocked that Barack Obama and his cohorts have used the occasion of the Government Shutdown as an opportunity to inflict as much pain on the American People as they felt to be politically beneficial. It’s not like this merry band of governing miscreants created a program that gifted assault weapons to Mexican Crime Lords, a program’s stupidity that was matched in its level of outrageousness by the purpose behind it. The entire exercise was set in motion for the sole purpose of creating a hatred for our Second Amendment, something that was supposed to be the natural reaction to the inevitable violence that would ensue. It’s not like this merry band of governing miscreants had not already used the budgetary growth slow downs for the same exact attempts to inflict pain upon Americans, so that Americans would scream to get the full scope of government waste and fraud restored. It’s not like this merry band of governing miscreants had not already sacrificed four American Citizens to a mob of terrorist thugs in Benghazi simply because the political calculus performed told them that it would be less harmful to allow those Americans die in order to keep the myth of Barack Obama’s foreign policy success alive and kicking prior to the 2012 Election.
This may surprise many of you, but the Executive Branch really does have quite a bit of discretion when it comes to how these temporary shutdowns are administered. The more astute of you may remember that our Federal Government has shut down a total of Seventeen time before, and those of you who possess adult memories can probably remember some of the things that were affected during previous such instances, and some of the things that are unique to today’s shut down. For instance, Social Security and payments to those qualifying for Veteran’s benefits have never been previously affected, as those funds are a matter of statutory distribution, or in the common parlance, written into the law already. I read as a comment on a previous post that the Interstate Highway that runs North and South through Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains, I75, has been closed because it traverses a National Park, despite the fact that the State of Tennessee is responsible for maintaining and patrolling that particular piece of highway. It costs our Federal Government more to close it than to allow travel to continue. Those WWII vets who were refused entry to their very own memorial might be surprised to learn that the Federal Government did not even administer that memorial that they went out of their way to close down, and are continuing to keep shut at this moment. Administration of that particular park is the responsibility of the city government of Washington D.C.
Currently, the House Republicans have passed Four resolutions designed to fund those areas of government which are being used to inflict pain upon the American People specifically, and offered to negotiate a way out of this mess with Dear Leader, who has firmed on his stance of all or nothing. I do not know how or when this whole mess will end, but I do know that the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in our President that the government is shut down. I do know that the pain that the American People are experiencing, which by the way is far greater than that pain experienced during the Seventeen previous such government shut downs, is the direct result of our President specifically making decisions to inflict that pain.
Here’s a particularly good read, written by Charles Krauthammer. Two things stand out about this article for me. One, Dr. Krauthammer was one of the pundits who blasted Ted Cruz and the Tea Party for this particular tactic, and even went so far as to suggest that Cruz run for Prime Minister of Canada. Two, he admits that while he disagrees with the tactic taken, he agrees wholeheartedly with the substance of the argument made, which for those of us inhabiting the substance over style universe, is what we really wanted to hear anyhow. It is possible that the success of the tactic thus far may be winning over some of those squishy moderate types.
From the Krauthammer essay:
(1) Substance
President Obama indignantly insists that GOP attempts to abolish or amend ObamaCare are unseemly because it is “settled” law, having passed both houses of Congress, obtained his signature and passed muster with the Supreme Court.
Yes, settledness makes for a strong argument — except from a president whose administration has unilaterally changed ObamaCare five times after its passage, including, most brazenly, a year-long suspension of the employer mandate.
Article 1 of the Constitution grants the legislative power entirely to Congress. Under what constitutional principle has Obama unilaterally amended the law? Yet when the House of Representatives undertakes a constitutionally correct, i.e., legislative, procedure for suspending the other mandate — the individual mandate — this is portrayed as some extra-constitutional sabotage of the rule of law.
Why is tying that amendment to a generalized spending bill an outrage, while unilateral amendment by the executive (with a Valerie Jarrett blog item for spin) is perfectly fine?
(2) Perpetrators
The mainstream media have been fairly unanimous in blaming the government shutdown on the GOP. Accordingly, House Republicans presented three bills to restore funding to national parks, veterans and the District of Columbia government. Democrats voted down all three. (For procedural reasons, the measures required a two-thirds majority.)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t even consider these refunding measures. And the White House has promised a presidential veto.
The reason is obvious: to prolong the pain and thus add to the political advantage gained from a shutdown blamed on the GOP. They are confident the media will do a “GOP makes little Johnny weep at the closed gates of Yellowstone, film at 11” despite Republicans having just offered legislation to open them.
(3) Origins
The most ubiquitous conventional wisdom is that the ultimate cause of these troubles is out-of-control Tea Party anarchists.
But is this really where the causal chain ends? The Tea Party was created by Obama’s first-term overreach, most specifically ObamaCare. This frantic fight against it today is the fruits of the way it was originally enacted.
From Social Security to civil rights to Medicaid to Medicare, never in the modern history of the country has major social legislation been enacted on a straight party-line vote. Never. In every case, there was significant reaching across the aisle, enhancing the law’s legitimacy and endurance.
Yet ObamaCare — which revolutionizes one-sixth of the economy, regulates every aspect of medical practice and intimately affects just about every citizen — passed without a single GOP vote.
So my friends, this is what it all comes down to. Here is how our President views himself, and more importantly, it is a sign to us, how Dear Leader has decreed that we address him.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: 2013 Government Shutdown
