Government Shutdown?
by James Glaser
November 23, 2011

Does it seem like our government in Washington has shut down? It sure does to me. Maybe the media has decided to stop reporting about most of the stuff they are doing, or maybe they are reporting everything they are doing, but they just are not doing much.

It seems to me we hear way more about the Republican presidential candidates than we hear about our elected officials. Yes, I heard about the so called Super Committee that couldn't get anything done on cutting our deficit, but I would hardly call that news. After all, most people predicted they would not be able to reach an agreement.

I know President Obama has been on the campaign trail for several months now. I think the last thing he did was present his Jobs Bill last summer, but he couldn't even get all of his own political party to back it. I have a feeling he really didn't want to pass it, but just wanted something else to blame on the Republicans.

Of course, way last spring the Republicans came up with their fix for the economy, and it passed in the House, but the Democrats in the Senate wouldn't even look at it. I think the Republicans wrote their bill the same way Obama wrote his, for the same reason. They wanted to say the Democrats were at fault.

It is kind of nice though that neither political party is doing much these days. I figure if the tax code is over 70,000 pages long, we must have about a million laws on the books right now. So, it probably wouldn't hurt us a bit if the government in Washington stopped working for a while. In fact, I think it would be a darn good thing.

Would it really hurt us if no new laws were passed for a few years? I don't think so. Heck, next year is election year. Maybe it would be a good idea if Washington shut down every forth year, and those elected could campaign the whole year, build up their war chests with campaign donations, and not be bothered with actually working.

Do you suppose that is what happened? Could Congress have passed a law that gives them the election year off, and the media was so busy covering all those Republican debates they just forgot to tell us?

Well, if that is what happened, it sure is a blessing.

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