An alternative viewof the government shutdown
Published 8:28 pm Tuesday, July 15, 2014
The mass media of our country has made much of the House of Representatives’ actions and by extension the actions of the Republican leadership in the House. I believe that, regardless of your opinion of what is and has happened, another look at how our government is functioning may be beneficial.
Our government is a construction of imbalance. Our government from the very beginning has been designed with check and balances, imbalances that guarantees it will not function smoothly. Starting with a look at the parties involved — the people, the states and the federal government — there is an imbalance. This very imbalance begins to show its influence in the government shutdown. The first legal actions taken against the Affordable Care Act/Obama Care were suits filed by the states, suits that led to a Supreme Court decision supporting the Affordable Care Act, a term that expresses more fiction than fact.
It was the fact that the federal government wished to force state governments to shoulder additional health care costs without providing any additional funding that led to the suit. It is the funding of the Obama Care that is at the root of the problems leading to the government shut down. Some will tell you that the burden placed on the states by the act could bankrupt some states but surely will force reductions in beneficial state programs as funds are redirected to Obama Care mandates.
Americans are more aware of their own finances than they are of either state or federal financial issues. For some Americans the price of their own health care is a price that they would willingly pay, but the miracles of modern medicine are often priced out of their reach. Modern medicine only appears to be a miracle until the bill arrives. Unusually severe medical problems present individuals with unaffordable prices and costs.
The apparent promise of solving the healthcare pricing problem comes from the federal government, but the only money our government has is money that is obtained from the public. The public and state governments have found these costs to be unbearable. The fight we see in Washington is not a fight over healthcare provisions but a fight over who pays.
The structure of our government begins to inject itself into the discussion as a part of the legislature presents a roadblock in the funding process. Our government has operated without a budget since Obama has taken office. Our country has been in financial crisis through the entire period Obama has governed. That is not an indictment of the Obama administration but a statement of the financial condition of the country. The effort of the Obama administration to spread the unaffordable cost of healthcare across a country in financial crisis is at the root of the problems that have led to government shut down.
We are now confronted with not a healthcare crisis or a financial crisis but a pending constitutional crisis. The structure of our government was designed to resolve difficult issues through debate. We have a president that shuns debate that he can’t control.
The issue we face with government shut down is not healthcare but the financial health of our country and whether we will remain a country that functions under the constraints of the constitution — a constitution we have fought and shed blood to defend.
We are at a crossroads that will define our country for many generations into the future. The issue to be resolved is what type of nation the selfish citizens of this nation will leave their children. We need to demand that out government operate in a fiscally responsible manner and be managed under the constraints of the constitution.
The problem is us. We elected those fools in Washington, and we can remove them, but we must be willing to give up our requests that Washington buy us what neither we nor our government can afford.
