Government Shutdown: Who Wins -- or Loses?

Enough is enough on Capital Hill, you don't see them cutting their pay or their pay raise that they took this year that was voted on several years ago, nor did you see them work this past week to come in agreement for the budget, no they had vacation, must be nice while the rest of the citizens are trying to coupe with rising gas prices, food, dr bills, mortgage, potential loss of their homes, while congress republicans and democrats enjoy life. Why can't they ever pass a budget on time, they haven't been able to pass a budget on time in years and they know when it is due, if we held them accountable they would all be fired. The need to start looking at wasteful spending like BRAC, where is the savings..there are none, all they do is relocate facilities build at the new areas and impact areas where they relocate impeding with increase of traffic, congestion, so all basically they do is shift where people live, impacting schools who are dealing with shortage of teachers due to cutbacks in States larger classroom sizes where learning becomes an issue. They need to stop contracting out, since that cost billions of dollars since the government doesn't know how to write contracts to hire appropriately and the contractors come back and get paid more for whatever changes or whatever the government doesn't do right. I can go on and on, but bottom line if we want to cleanup the deficiet than congress look at your pay, BRAC's, contractor contracts and we can save. Work for the people......no for your greed.

It would be a tragic mistake to let the Govt. shut down.Not only would it affect all social security recepients but it will finally show just how out of touch the House and Senate are. They don't care about the middle class or low-income,all they care about is how good or bad they look to their rich supporters. They have shown time and time again just how out of touch they are e.g.Health Care bill that they are not governed by,and then with a possible shutdown of Government looming in the very near future they are not even in session this week. What does that tell you? It tells you they don't care. Term limits and Lobbyist controls should be initiated immediately!!!!!

Every president in the last 50 years have not even close got the spending undercontrol, several economist say the start of the downturn was under clinton while his tax increases were at its highest, statistically it is proven time and time again tax rate and government spending is at low levels the economy will climb but as the economy climbs another entitlement program pops up so another tax and starts it downward spiral. It in history books if you care to it up. Bush obama clinton none of them had the courage to explain to the public we are broke created too many programs costing too much money taxing too much from the people and worse more from the buisnesses. TOO MUCH we are on the brink of colapse loosing everthing we have or will have

Well, I was around for the first 2 shutdowns and this sucked. I still had to work, without pay. Try making a house payment, when you don't have the funds to due so. I, personally am sick and tired of the political shannegans both sides like to play. It's time to think about the people that they affect and not about pointing fingers or going "nanee nanee nanna, I win, you loose." In my opinion, nobody wins, the people loose! It is time for the people of this country to revolt against this bureaucratic bumbling bunch of idiots. When the hell are these idiots going to stop the games and get real about getting this country back on track. Damn, watching a bunch of ants work throughout the day is more productive then what goes on the the so called congress and senate. It's tea party time!

That's easy - the person or group who has control over the purse strings or finances; that is, the legislative branch of government or House of Representatives. More specifically, the speaker of the house...

If Democrats and the president would have done their jobs and had a budget and stopped the spending and got the job growth going instead of the Health Care bill we would be in better shape today along with no bailouts of any company.
Now the Republicans are having to do what the Democrats failed to do the past 4 years.
Of course the Republicans are called the bad guys because nobody likes change or tightening up the budget strings to get control of the free spending which has been done the last 2 years.
We are in for the long haul for the next 2 years when we can bid Obama good bye and hope that we get a LEADER not a PUPPET.

It's not that hard "to know where the American public is these days." There is plenty of polling on issue priorities. And the debt and deficit usually pull in anywhere from the single digits to the mid teens as Americans' #1 priority for Congress (peaking at 25%). The overwhelming #1 priority is the economy, and Republicans are going to have a hard time selling that cutting spending (aka money being pumped into the economy that would otherwise not be there) as beneficial to the state of our economy.

The numbers are there, and it would be nice if journalists would take a look at them from time to time (see Public Option)

I have a vision of responsible government in mind that could accommodate a very modest 2% trim in spending without a single grandma dying or baby starving as a result. How is it that Corn cannot conceive of a responsible government? Is it due to studying the record of government reliability and responsibility?

Mr. Corn, are you seriously suggesting that Democrats would shut the government down in preference to a mere 2% trim of Obama's outlandish $3.69 Trillion budget wish list? If so, we are further gone than I had hoped.

Being one who depends on my "entitlement" social security check for my month to month income, my first phone call following a government shutdown will be to a bankruptcey attorney. Then someone besides me will get absolutely nothing.