It’s Postponed
More than three-quarters of the Senate and almost two-thirds of the House voted to end the current shutdown and delay hitting the debt ceiling.
They didn’t end this mess, they just postponed it for a while. Now they need to get back to work and do their job. They could start by bringing back the ‘Gephardt rule’ which required Congress to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate the spending it approves.
We dodged a fatal ‘bullet’, but if you have a credit card or adjustable rate mortgage you can expect your interest rate to go up thanks to the Republican games. The rate on T-bills will also increase and every 0.1% of increase is another $15 billion taxpayers will owe, thanks to Republicans. People have been laid off and some businesses will close because of the shutdown.
The House Republicans have cost a lot of people, a lot of money.
2 comments
One estimate I read last night (where? sorry; I don’t remember) for the total cost to taxpayers of this misadventure was $24 billion. It confirmed my longstanding impression that far from being merely useless, Republicans are worse than useless; they are the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
Do you have details on the provision that gives the Treasury a priori authorization for “extraordinary” expenditures, with Congress able to vote its disapproval but the president able to veto the disapproval? You’ve just read all I know about it; some details would be appreciated, but I haven’t read any.
Some of the “conservative” right-wing extremists are already talking about the next battle as of mid-January. I don’t know about that; more mainstream Republicans might start resorting to 2nd Amendment solutions within their own party.
As for me, I am once again advocating a solution to our energy problems, something involving hooking up generators at the tombs of our nation’s founders, for they are surely spinning in their graves…
The $24 billion was Standard and Poors estimate of the damage to the economy by the shutdown. The actual cost will be multiples of that because of business failures around National Parks, lost salaries of people working for government suppliers and contractors, financing costs of lines of credit used to keep businesses running until the cash flow starts again, etc.
I’m going to put up a post with the official links to the votes and the bill, which is actually only about 35 pages.