360 Degrees: Government Shutdown

Upon recent weeks, one of the main political issues that have been circling around is the potential government shutdown. Through recent time, a growing concern within our nation has to do with the large national debt and large government spending. This directly stems from our budget deficit which directly correlates with the potential government shut down. The reason why the government would shut down is because it would not have a new budget. The current budget is soon to run out and there is no budget in place. This has caused a problem that for the short term has just been resolved; however it took time and effort to look at all potential problems with this issue.

 The first issue that this possible government shutdown has to do with is the budget issue. As said before, for many years our nation’s budget deficit has been continuously accumulating to insurmountable levels. It seems impossible to recover from such a deficit. But, it has come from years of abusing our budget. It has been from overspending in one area to another, but we can never see where we do not need the money. We as Americans just keep on spending. It leads to the questions, where can we make budget cuts? And, should we make these budget cuts? These are questions that need to be addressed and answered by our politicians.

Speaking of politicians, another issue leading to a possible government shutdown is the divide between Republicans and Democrats. Throughout politics, this has been an extremely strong divide. This divide has not allowed for much bipartisan collaboration on such serious issues where both sides have opposing viewpoints. This seems like one of those cases. Democrats do not want to cut spending in areas such as education, public services, and newly implemented government projects; however they do see possible cutbacks in defense. Republicans on the other hand want to cut spending and even cancel some of the new projects, but eagerly opposed defense cuts. Seeing this divide previously, it is expected that this divide would come up when talking about budget cuts, but never so seriously.

What is striking in this case is that the government is one step from shutting down all its non-essential aspects. This is shocking but it is not completely uncommon. Although a complete government shutdown has not happened, under the Clinton Administration there was a brief shutdown of some non-essential parts of the government for a short period of time. As you guessed it, it was over a budget deficit. Unfortunately, we have not learned from our mistakes and this issue regarding our budget and deficit lingers leading to the unfortunate case of a possible shutdown.

It is quite obvious and horrendous what a government shutdown would do. It would in some way or another disrupt the lives of every America. Fortunately, our Senators and Representatives recently decided on a new budget that will last till 2012. This does solve the problem in the short term, but it just makes us worry about it in the future; that is not a solution. It brings up the question how can our government actually solve this problem? Unfortunately it has never answered that question for the problem continues. We have a problem on our hands, but we do not have to deal with a government shutdown till 2012 possibly. What does this lead us to believe?