4.08.2011

This is 'victory'?

It appears that in what is quite literally an 11th Hour Deal, some budget agreement has been reached in Washington DC, to avert a potentially catastrophic government shutdown, for at least another 9 months or so. 

I have some friends/former co-workers at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard who are very happy to hear this.  The big topic of discussion for them the last few days was who would be labeled 'essential', vs. who would be given some unpaid time off via a 'furlough'.  Now me, the only thing I know about furloughs is that the guys on Hogans Hero's were always trying to get one.  It didn't seem like most of my friends were as excited about it as the guys in Stalag 13. 

So....yay!?!?!!?  All the folks in D.C. are patting themselves on the back for accomplishing, in Barry's own words, 'the biggest annual spending cut in history', and trimming the budget by 38 Billion dollars.  Although, that isn't really what they did...the cut their request for funding by 38 Billion Dollars, which is a pretty huge number.  Even then, it would take 375 years to pay down a 14.38 TRILLION dollar deficit 38 Billion dollars per year....not accounting for interest.

Oh...and not accounting for the fact that even with cutting their spending request by 38 Billion, they are still going to INCREASE the debt by over 1 TRILLION DOLLARS this year. 

On the plus side, we now won't have to hear about the budget from Main Stream Media outlets for another 9 months, and Barry can get back to campaigning. 

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