No Shutdown

The President got on TV just a few minutes ago to announce that there would be no shutdown of the Federal Government, stating that a compromise had been reached that would cut roughly 39 billion dollars from last year's federal budget. The pending shutdown would've happened because a fully controlled Democratic Congress didn't pass this budget last year. The budget is mainly a stop gap to keep spending up for the next few months. The Republicans are looking to the fall to start debating an entirely new budget where they have more say about what may or may not go into it since it will be their first budget.

While some will say this is good for Republicans as something similar allowed Clinton to get re-election in 1996 I whole-heartedly disagree. Bob Dole lost in 1996 because he was a major player in the Republicans caving when they gained control of Congress in 1994. People who voted Republican in 94 felt betrayed by those they voted for, and in turn either didn't show up at the voting booth on Election Day in 96 or showed up to vote against those that betrayed them. This eventually led to an economic boom in the mid 90's and lasted mostly through the Bush Administration. The difference here is that we're still in major military conflicts overseas, which is hurting our economic status in the world.

Cutting 39 billion dollars from a 3 trillion dollar budget isn't going to solve anything. Cutting 390 billion dollars would help, but it'd still be a drop in the bucket to the amount of money Government is spending on a yearly basis.