World News Korner

A graph to explain why during this government shutdown President Obama does not go with Republican plans to fund individual programs one at a time to relieve political pressure.

Courtesy of the Atlantic:

The government is still shut down, as thousands of workers go without pay, food goes without inspection, and sick patients go without clinical trials. Meanwhile, Republicans have offered to restore funding on a piece-by-piece basis that would pay some of those workers and treat some of those patients.

The president has said no. But why, CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller asked at the press conference today.

Obama responded that while he's "certainly tempted" to take up the GOP offers, he didn't want to fund slivers of the government, one at a time. On the one hand, funding the discretionary budget bit by bit spares the most headline-y victims and lessens the pain of shutdown. On the other hand, the piecemeal approach ... well, spares the most headline-y victims and lessens the pain of shutdown, prolonging the crisis, itself.

So, depending on how you look at it, the piecemeal approach is both a plan to fund government as soon as possible and a plan to leave government unfunded as long as possible.

There is a graph for this (Seen up at the top.), of course. Michael Linden counts up the six piecemeal non-defense appropriations bills passed by the House (and unsigned by the president) and the eight other bills the House wants to pass in the coming weeks. "Together, these 14 bills allocate approximately $83.1 billion in funding," Linden writes. That would leave 82 percent of the $470 billion non-defense discretionary government unfunded.

Actually I did not need a graph to understand why it was a stupid idea to fund the government ONE PROGRAM AT A TIME! And when that guy from CBS asked the President that question during the press conference I yelled "NOOOO!"

The President needs to, and in my opinion will, hold firm until the Republicans do their damn job and stop holding the country hostage.

However, just like the Atlantic article says, that will NOT happen if the Republicans can ease the pressure on them by getting a few of their pet programs funded and look like they are being reasonable, when they are being anything but.

If he allows them to pressure him into give even an inch, all of this hardship will be for nothing, and for some it will continue indefinitely.


But if he holds tight, I think this cartoon sums up the outcome nicely.

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