Oh Boy. Do We Have Problems.

       Ya want a good laugh? Listen to people place blame for the government shutdown and upcoming debt ceiling crisis. On the one hand you've got Conservatives, Republicans and Tea Partiers pointing fingers at a weak President unwilling or unable to govern, and unresponsive Democratic Senators for not doing their jobs while Americans suffer.
       On the other hand, you've got Liberals, Progressives and Democrats asking why the House Republicans and especially John Boehner won't put forward a clean bill to reopen the government and remove the  obstacles to a debt ceiling increase without  repealing Obamacare. It's simple, they say, the ACA has nothing to do with the debt ceiling. It's the law. Live with it. Put the country back to work and then negotiate. All this while Americans suffer.
       Both sides have legitimate points, and both sides overlook their own deficiencies, but to hear each side, theirs is the only fair game in town. The one side says if they can't have Obamacare brought down, then lets cut much of the entitlements. Or even better, let's do both. The other side says they're in the right because nobody wants the entitlements cut or Obamacare defunded.
       It's a real dilemma. On the one hand, the debt ceiling they're all talking about is for bills on stuff they already spent. So, do we pay our bills or do we become a deadbeat nation? On the other hand our debt is out of hand. The cuts being proposed only cut the deficit. The monthly bills for our debt. The debt keeps increasing.
       Look at it this way, if we stopped paying all entitlements from today on, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and all the safety-net programs, we'd begin to pay off our debt, if slowly. Unfortunately an extremely large segment of our population would begin to starve to death. Maybe as much as forty percent of the population. That's because about half the small businesses in the country would go belly up before we could make a serious dent in the debt. And then most of the other businesses in the country would close their doors. Which means we'd have about fifty to sixty percent unemployment. That's if major the corporations don't do the same.
       On the other hand we could cut our defense budget in half and still have the largest military in the world. Which would begin to lower our debt also. But then countries who are our enemies or wannabees would begin to get ideas about attacking us, or at least more ideas than now.
       The point to all this is that we already have more than enough problems without Congress causing us these extra problems.