Government Shutdown Day 5: More factoids for your edification:

The House just passed and sent the 13th bill to the Senate over the last 10 days to fully or partially re-open the government. The president and Harry Reid have said that they will not “pick winners and losers” by passing any of these bills that only fund parts of the government and not all. But, like much of what they say, that’s not true. Last Monday, the Senate passed and the president signed a House bill that ensured that all uniformed military personnel and civilian support personnel were not furloughed. This morning, we just passed a bill that assures furloughed workers that they will be paid in full whenever the shutdown is over. The president said he will sign it. So why, Mr. President and Mr. Reid, have you chosen to sign bills for the military and largely-unionized federal employees’ pay, but not for children’s cancer research, veteran’s benefits or national parks? A common response to these writings from the left is that ObamaCare is the law of the land, upheld by the Supreme Court and therefore we must follow it and implement it. The … Read More

Government Shutdown Day 3: The outcome of last night’s meeting at the White House was predictably poor. It appears that the president called in legislative leaders to tell them for the third time in 2 weeks that he refuses to negotiate or compromise on anything. This is akin to a husband or wife in the middle of a fight in which they aren’t speaking to each other, calling their spouse into the living room to exclaim to them, “I am not and will not be speaking with you.” And, then promptly dismissing them. It is counterproductive.

Back in March, when the “Sequester” first went into effect, you may remember that the president intentionally tried to create as much disruption about sequestration as possible in order to generate public pressure against it. One of his more extreme actions was to furlough meat inspectors so that no meat could legally be sold in the country, while, at the same time, not laying-off a single economist within the Department of Agriculture (note: this department has more economists than any organization on planet earth.) The public saw through this blatant abuse of power, and he was forced to put the meat… Read More