Shut down

For the first time since 1995 & 1996, there is a federal government shut down. Who knows how long this iteration will last but it seems to last days when it happened in '95/'96.

It seemed back then Newt Gingrich who had been Speaker of the House back then had his behind handed to him when he tried to talk to then President Bill Clinton. And also remember the next year was an election year and Clinton in my eyes went from being a weak President to one who had been re-elected!

To be sure this time around it snuck up on me like nothing. Earlier last month we were talking about going into Syria and curb their use of chemical weapons. Now it's the debate over the debt ceiling and a government shut down if the various factions of federal politicians couldn't agree. At that a part of this process was about Obamacare which is now seeing one facet implemented with the Marketplaces now enrolling.

While it seems there are those partisans who are trumpeting this I'm not going to be too upset if the House Republicans are able to successfully defund this. The rollout of this Obamacare law hasn't been the smoothest operation at all so far. While I think nothing is perfect when it comes to making some changes to health care in this country there are surely better solutions to this problem than injecting the federal government into this industry.

In the meanwhile, our Washington, DC politicians weren't able to stave off a federal government shutdown last night. It could be said they weren't able to compromise on those issues that were sticking points. I also don't expect Obamacare to be defunded, however, stranger things could happen.

Let's hope that the federal government is back on track in no time!

BTW, read yesterday's post by Rich Miller at Capitol Fax. He avoids national issues like the plague and disdains any use of national propaganda/talking points in his comments section. He goes from the Illinois angle and then to the outcome of this shutdown for Speaker John Boehner. It puts some things into perspective.