Fixing the Shutdown Scam

The Shutdown Law can only be fixed by Congress. The President cannot fix this.  Congress should take a hard look at the idiocy of the Antideficiency Act that codifies the Shutdown travesty.

If Congress wants some punishment for their failure to pass budgets, the budget itself should suffer the consequences, not the federal employees.  With each day of failure to pass budgets on time, the Congress should impose across-the board budget reductions to whatever budget is eventually approved.

To avoid a shutdown, Bills passed by the House and Senate need to be signed by the President. So the President could actually trigger and prolong a shutdown and under new rules could impose budget reductions. Because budgets require Presidential approval, the President actually shares “control of the purse” with Congress.  Congress alone does not have exclusive authority over spending.  Congress doesn’t control the purse, it designs the purse and the President approves it.

The current Shutdown Law was conceived 120 years ago before the myriad of budget work-arounds had been available. Congress and the President need to review these loopholes and close the worst of them. All US Laws need to be reviewed to reduce federal involvement and funding of things the States should control and pay for under the 10^th Amendment.

The Shutdown Scam is a symptom of the kind of problems that are created by unconstitutional federal laws, departments, agencies and programs enacted over the past 120 years. We are wasting $6 trillion of our $20 trillion GDP on government and that’s 30%.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader