By now you should have heard that there was no government shutdown due to lack of congress hammering out a budget for 2011. They managed to shake hands with each other at roughly 11 pm the night before the deadline. Go ahead and ignore the fact that it’s already mid April of 2011 and I’m assuming the government spent some amount of money up to this point. In fact the government spent quite a bit up to this point, since the stopgap measures passed by congress to get us through the squabble times were merely extensions of last year’s budget, with small cuts imposed on them.
A lot of people are claiming this as a win. The Republicans are happy that they got at least 38 million in cuts out of the Democrats. The Democrats are happy they didn’t have to give up 60+ million or swallow any of the riders that had been tacked onto the bill. (Hilariously one of the riders was a measure to defund the most recent Health Care Bill, this being funny because the bill was basically passed as a rider on last years budget) The President gets to say that he’s leading compromise efforts and keeping the government running. Everyone won right?
Sure, I guess, except… Plenty of Tea Party members are coming off the benches saying the cuts weren’t enough. Both the President and the Democrats are facing down the barrel of a very nasty “You’ve got to cut even more next year” shotgun. Several of the Democrats might be facing the loss of programs they championed. And beyond that a cut in government spending at this point could have a detrimental effect on the economy depending on where the money was cut from.
Overall though I think this was both a move in the right direction; budgets cuts, and a great showcase of exactly what the business community needs; a stalled government. Stalled governments represent no changes in the laws, which means that businesses can more accurately forecast the future, which means they will make more and riskier investments, which usually results in more and better jobs. Here’s hoping that that pans out correctly. Either way I feel good in the knowledge that the government will not be doing much this year, since it took them four months just to figure out what they could spend money on.
