Creating a false crisis

Congress and the White House have known for a long time that the previous Continuing Resolution (CR) would run out and the growing national debt would require Congress to raise the debt ceiling. But Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, true to his role, has been the brakeman, slowing down the legislative process once again, putting the federal government in crisis mode. And the President has gone all-out to portray the Republicans, supposedly under the command of the Tea Party, leading the nation to economic collapse.

This orchestrated script has unfolded with Democrat leaders and the presidential administration using false rhetoric to describe their Republican political opponents with terms reserved for our real enemies. Using terms that generally apply to radical Islamist terrorists, the primary enemy to modern civilization, they have chosen to wage a propaganda offensive that describes Republicans, and especially the Tea Party, with phrases such as "strapping bombs to their chest, "holding hostages," and “putting a gun to their head” to describe the non-violent legislative process. Setting the stage to concentrate ever more power into his hands, the President is now trying to gin up his base to vehemently oppose those he tries to frame as mindless fanatics wanting to destroy government and bring this nation into utter chaos. It doesn't matter to him that law-abiding people who are trying to bring sanity to an out of control government are anything but bomb-throwing fanatics. They would rather portray their opponents as ultimate evil bringing this nation to the precipice of economic collapse.

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Meanwhile, what Senator Reid is describing as “anarchy” is simply the legislative process in gridlock. While funding has been restored with a few individual appropriation bills, the Democrat-led Senate, under President Obama’s orders, will not accept removal or delay to any parts of Obamacare, and the Republican-led House will not accept a CR that does nothing to restrict the implementation of Obamacare. Here is what has happened so far: Introduced to the House of Representatives on September 10, on September 20 the House passed Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014 (House Joint Resolution 59) with an amendment to defund Obamacare while funding the rest of the government through December 15, 2013. It then went to the Senate for consideration. After stripping the defunding portion from the Bill, the Senate voted on the CR on September 27 and sent it back to the House. On the 30th, the House, unwilling to agree to the CR with Obamacare funding reinserted, sent a compromise CR that would fund Obamacare with two exceptions. It delayed until 2015 the requirement for individuals to have at least minimum health insurance (the “individual mandate”) and removed the exclusive subsidy on health insurance given to the President and his administration as well as to Congress members and their staff. Reid would not accept this revision either, so the compromise CR was immediately tabled, time ran out and it was October 1 with no CR being agreed upon by the House and Senate. Those unfunded parts of the government were now in Shutdown. The House then sent another amended CR that delayed the implementation of Obamacare by a year. This also was tabled by the Senate. After a week, the Shutdown continues, with no resolution to the House-Senate impasse at hand. Meanwhile, the President has gone to outrageous extremes to make the Shutdown as painful as possible: barricades have gone up to keep tourists out of federally-managed sites which are always left open to people during the regular government shutdowns known as Weekends.