Hagel calls govt shutdown threat 'shortsighted' ('we will have a country that's ungovernable')

AP ^ | 9/28/2013 | LOLITA C. BALDOR

[markomalley]

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel criticized Congress on Saturday as "astoundingly irresponsible" and said that using threats to shut down the government to satisfy a political whim is dangerously shortsighted.

Hagel, who oversees as much as half of the government civilians who would be furloughed next week if Congress doesn't reach a budget agreement, told reporters that the impasse threatens to delay paychecks to troops serving in Afghanistan.

"When you look at the greatest democracy in the world, the largest economy in the world and we're putting our people through this — that's not leadership. That's abdication of responsibilities," Hagel told reporters on his plane en route to South Korea. "This is an astoundingly irresponsible way to govern."

Hagel added: "It is really dangerously shortsighted and irresponsible, because what this will lead to in the United States of America, if this continues, is we will have a country that's ungovernable."

[JediJones]

Hagel, as a myopic-American I demand that you retract your insult of using a vision-normative term against the differently focused.

LOL! Darn right. It's time we stop letting them treat us as second-class citizens. It's doubly hard sitting at the back of the bus when you can't even see all the way to the front.

[ogen hal]

These putrid LIBs are insufferably moronic. If the Clown Car administration of Clown Prince nobama is responsibly “governing”, that’s news to me. They are mainly stealing my freedom, money and future. Commie freaks.

[VRWC For Truth]

Democrats fault. They own the titanic disaster. Invest in guillotines because the tsunami is breaking.

[VideoDoctor]

SHUT 'ER DOWN BOYS... SHUT 'ER DOWN!

[GeronL]

The left has become totally off their rockers

[RJS1950]

STFU upChuck. You were a POS senator and you’re a POS excuse for an American.

[unlearner]

Hagel has no idea what ungovernable is. He should hope and pray Obamacare is swept into the dustbin of history. Otherwise we will end up in a nasty civil war.

These guys think they will easily round up the opposition, kill, torture and imprison us. What they will discover is there is no place on God’s green earth they will be able to hide from the justice that will be meted out.

The rapid rate the left is pushing its tyranny is going to result in an extreme backlash.

[TBP]

IOW, it might harm Democrats’ political designs, as the 1995 shutdown did.

[trebb]

"It is really dangerously shortsighted and irresponsible, because what this will lead to in the United States of America, if this continues, is we will have a country that's ungovernable." He can always step down and raise chinchillas or something.

Exactly. And since when does Sec Def worry about the "govern-ability of the People"? More proof of where his real heart/loyalties lie - and it's not with the military.

[lavaroise]

It is ungovernable because the like of Hagel are in charge without limits an controls. Anarchy is usually a one way govenment street.

[lavaroise]

They are in campain mode. They know it is chaos and anarchy and will fall apart. Right now they are presenting it as being our fault for the shut down, just like the sitting government unions in Wisconsin.