By the time this goes to print, perhaps the U.S. Congress will have agreed to pay its debts and fund its government.
Fingers are crossed saner heads have prevailed.
If not, the United States is poised to take world finance over the cliff.
It all began just weeks ago when House Republicans demanded the Affordable Care Act be stripped of its funding if they were to vote to fund the federal government. As time passed, the country’s debt limit came into play with Republicans equally intransigent.
Today, the country is just two days away from denying the U.S. treasury the ability to borrow money for expenditures already authorized by Congress, an act which has global markets fearful of plunging the world into a recession every bit as bad as 2008, if not worse.
On Oct. 1, the furloughs began. At first they seemed symbolic. Now, they are diabolic. People are unable to cash support checks, mothers and children are going without food staples through the federal Women, Infants and Children support program, and federal employees still are without work or pay.
To date, House Republicans have not budged in their demands to extract concessions in return for bringing the country from the brink of disaster, though their conditions change as frequently as the winds.
Now, in recognition of their preposterous demands on Obamacare, a majority of Republicans favor a very pro-business agenda that includes more tax cuts, relaxation of environmental regulations and a more rigorous testing for those applying for Medicare benefits.
And they call this compromise, for what should not have been negotiable in the first place.
Speaker of the House John Boehner still has not called for a vote to pass a strings-free resolution to fund the government or to raise the debt ceiling.
Word has it, a meeting of minds between House Democrats and moderate Republicans would pass the measures, putting Boehner’s position as leader in jeopardy by bloodthirsty conservatives.
THIS EXTORTION style of politics has plunged the Republican Party to its nadir.
Even GOP conservatives are no longer united as a front. By midweek, Charles and David Koch, of Wichita’s powerful Koch Industries, wrote to congressional leaders saying they did not favor the government shutdown and especially were fearful of not extending the country’s debt ceiling.
Though the Koch brothers love to rant about the excesses of big government, their businesses are very dependent on its operation.
Truth is, the Tea Party and its ilk are not a grass roots movement. Rather, they represent an extreme fringe that gets a disproportionate amount of publicity.
World leaders look aghast as U.S. politicians take this political standoff to a voluntary default on our debts and plunge world markets into chaos.
