Government Shutdown? Please!!

Government Shutdown? Please!!
The View from the Middle

It is official. Chicken Little has become the spokesperson for the US Government, or at least the Democrat party. And this is no ordinary, confused, hysterical Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling when an acorn dropped on its head. This is an agenda driven, maniacal, duplicitous chicken intent on deceiving the public and creating a panic the original chick was famous for.
There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976. Some lasting just a day while others lasted a week or so. Bill Clinton still holds the record for shutting the government down for 21 days as he and Republicans fought over whether we should use the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to project our deficits. In other words, over nothing.
The last government shutdown, under President Obama, was equally unnecessary but particularly messy. Republicans, lead by Ted Cruz, tried to pass a continuing resolution to run the government, which defunded Obamacare. While the cause may have been noble (to me), even I had to admit that the chances of that bill passing was virtually zero. Harry Reid and the Democrats still controlled the Senate and Barack Obama was in the White House. Reid and Obama would have both taken a bullet in the head before agreeing to that continuing resolution.
But then the President decided to make that government shutdown especially painful. First, he shutdown the “open air” World War II Memorial. This memorial is not even regularly staffed, but Barack Obama actually spent extra funds to have it barricaded. That meant that 80 and 90 year old veterans, who had already booked flights, would be denied access.
Obama shut down over 400 national parks even when the act of closing them was greater than leaving them open. He closed Mount Rushmore, The Vietnam Memorial and even tried to close privately owned Mount Vernon because the Park Service maintained the parking lot. And let’s not forget that White House tours were still being canceled due to their tremendous impact on the budget.
A park ranger was quoted as saying, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.” He added, “It’s disgusting” and I heartily agree with him. When will we learn? It is clear that the government has evolved into something our Founders did not intend. Instead of a protector of our freedom, it has become a vehicle through which the masses can be fleeced and manipulated by a privileged few.
But there is good news in all of these government shutdown exercises. The truth is that these shutdowns prove the exact opposite of their advertised predictions. They prove that nothing of real consequence happens as a result of a government shutdown. For those of you who were alive, do you remember any cataclysmic results from the eight (yes 8) shutdowns during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency? Even after all the effort by Barack Obama to disrupt our lives, do you remember any national pestilence as a result of that shutdown? It didn’t even impact our economy. Our GDP, in fact, grew faster in that quarter than the quarters before and after! The people who were furloughed got paid when the shutdown ended, so the American people actually gave them a paid vacation.
So bring on the next shutdown. Let the government prove once more that it is too big, too inefficient, too corrupt and that we can get along quite well without all the “nonessential personnel”. In fact, now that we have identified those nonessential people, what if we actually eliminate those jobs? What a novel idea!!