Posted on 01/24/2019 7:57:00 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Were he writing op-eds today, Tolstoy might point out that all shutdowns are dumb, but that this one is the dumbest.
What makes it so dumb? Do I really need to answer that? Suffice it to say that this Congress, which can’t agree on anything, agreed to appropriate the money needed to avoid a shutdown, until President Trump swooped in at the last minute and blocked the deal, based on pressure from his base to “build the wall.” No one, including Trump, knows what “the wall” is, beyond a campaign slogan.
True, spineless Senate Republicans won’t stand up to Trump on this, but the fact remains: If one stubborn, ill-informed person can shut down the government of the world’s largest economy and keep it that way for more than a month, something very important is very broken. And it’s going to take a lot more than ending the shutdown to fix it.
For now, 800,000 furloughed or unpaid government workers are feeling the direct brunt of this idiocy, but consider that Trump’s chief economist, Kevin Hassett, warned that the shutdown is doing so much damage to the economy that it could mean that the real gross domestic product growth rate this quarter will be zero. As I’ll explain in a moment, I suspect he’s wrong, although quarterly numbers are volatile, so you never know.
But what is Hassett saying here? Is he trying to send his boss a message? Trump explicitly owns the shutdown, so I can’t be the only one having trouble wrapping the aging noggin around his administration complaining about its effect. They could stop it by the time I finish writing this missive! Hassett warning about the shutdown’s effect is like a mugger warning you that if he doesn’t cease and desist, you might get hurt....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
WE’re taking people who work for the gov’t off the payroll. These people produce nothing, and if anything add to the inefficiency and debt.
I would wager, that the shut will have no appreciable affect on GDP. Unemployment, maybe? Job numbers. Probably.
But so what. In fact, the silver lining might be that there will be a wholesale layoff of people in the federal gov’t and that might be a good thing.
“Were he writing op-eds today, Tolstoy might point out that all shutdowns are dumb”
What the @#$% ?!
We’ve had an idea what the wall would look like for a decade. Trump asking for barrier funds isn’t news. He was told after agreeing to past continuing resolutions they would get around to it. Never happened. Now he’s saying enough already. Reagan didn’t get the enforcement he was promised to agree to amnesty.
The President is requesting $5.7 billion dollars as a partial payment for the wall.
That amount is equal to 1/10th of 1% of annual FedGov spending.
One tenth of one percent.
Not even a rounding error.
Fully funding the wall would amount to 1/2 of 1% of annual FedGov expenditures.
A pittance in the grand scheme of things.
It’s obviously not the money.
It just depends if these people are still spending money. I guess they probably are. They have to be but maybe not as much. Consumer spending is a huge part of our economy. It’s frightening, but, all government spending is counted as GDP including deficit spending so if it spends less it shrinks GDP.
There are 325,145,963 people in the USA. These 800,000 are what? .01,%?
Seems like a pretty small number affecting the GDP and most likely concentrated in liberal enclaves to boot.
Another WAAAAAAAA! from the WaaaaaaPo...
That would require them to have long term thinking and planning
They seem to lack that ability
I'd be very much okay with this. That would give a sense of urgency to ending the shutdown, and I hope and pray that Trump would respond by reopening the government - and ordering the Wall built under his emergency powers. I'd love to see him put $40B into materials for the Wall, with the military providing 100% of the labor. I wonder how many miles of Wall you can get for that price if the labor is already covered by salaries in the DoD budget.
They say $5B will build a little less than 300 miles of wall if that price includes labor. Assuming half the cost is materials, I'm guessing $40B with zero for labor would build a double wall, spaced several hundred yards apart and with a road for patrolling between the two walls, and a triple-strand concertina wire barrier another couple hundred yards beyond that second Wall. Sounds like the best imaginable national defense action for our military. Then we can reopen the government and use the $5B that Nancy is offering to hire more ICE and more immigration judges to deport the 12 million plus illegals already here.
No new illegals. Zero. New illegals should get immediate immigration hearings (if the globalists win on that demand) and be deported if they do not have the documentation to prove they meet the strictest interpretation of our laws, and even those who have documentation should be required to pass an NSA-level polygraph to get asylum. Illegals who are deported should be permanently barred from reentry. No Amnesty. Deport all illegals. No exceptions. Then we can fix our legal immigration system so those immigrants whose presence helps the United States and in particular helps working Americans can come here legally.
We need shutdowns more often, and for longer.
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