A budget deal has been struck (at the last minute, of course)! So today, the federal government is open for business! History has been made! The National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade can go forward! The Republic is saved!
From the self-congratulatory tone of some the public statements of the participants, you’d think our elected representatives had discovered a cure for cancer, rather than just belatedly completed a job that should have been done last year. I’m glad that the ludicrous spectacle of a federal government shutdown was avoided, but forgive me if I don’t join in the hosannas for President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Republicans and Democrats in Congress. If progress can be made on reducing spending, shoring up revenue, balancing the budget, and eliminating our federal debt only by incremental steps, after weeks of invective and name-calling, when everyone’s back is to the wall, we are in for a long period of ugly contentiousness.
Now, on to the next last-minute, bruising battle, about raising the national debt limit.
Webner House 