Just reading the headline feels good, doesn’t it? The Senate still has to cast their vote, but for once, House Republicans have actually joined with Democrats in great enough numbers to potentially un-decide the decider. Of course, it wasn’t for reduced war funding, children’s health care or a moratorium on references to Ronald Reagan within the limits of Washington, D.C.: the bipartisan tie that bound the veto-proof majority is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen and something even politicians have to drink to stay alive.
The water-resources development act is one in over a dozen spending bills the Bush White House opposes on the grounds of being “irresponsible and excessive level of spendingâ€, regardless of the hundreds of billions of dollars the man has frittered away in impotent military exercises in the Middle East. If Congress and George W. Bush can’t work out a compromise (read: legislators huffing and puffing before caving in), the nation could be facing a government shutdown, a spectacle that hasn’t occurred since Newt Gingrich forced a deadlock against President Clinton at the end of 1995.
Unlike the Clinton years (when an adult – albeit a philandering one – was in charge), shutting down the government might actually be a good thing… on the other hand, Bush will undoubtedly go ahead and do what he wants, as discretionary and mandatory spending bills have never stopped him from ratcheting up an astronomical, off-the-books deficit. Government shutdown would just expose the full extent to which legislators have become farce, no more than a political Punch and Judy show to keep the people’s attention while our leader and his cabal make the real decisions.
