Long Past Time

It may not be over yet. But with America only a week away until the Armageddon Deadline, the end of the G-O-TEA Shutdown Sh*tfest may finally be near.

Sure, House Republican "leaders" are pushing their farcical "split the baby" strategy now. But behind the scenes, these latest attempts at political maneuvering are really just tearing apart the Republican Party. And the longer Republicans continue their manufactured crisis, the steeper the political price Republicans will pay in upcoming elections.

According to the brand new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, the Republican Party's favorable rating among Americans has dropped to a record low 24%. And to make matters even worse for them, only 39% support a Republican controlled Congress while 47% want a Democratic controlled Congress. Add this to the other recent polls, and Republicans now have plenty of reasons to worry about 2014 (and 2016).



So long story short, Republicans are choking on their own bile. Yet while Republicans are suffering politically, millions of Americans are suffering for real. And keep in mind that this suffering is on top of the pain the nation was already feeling due to austerity.

Fortunately, Salon's Joan Walsh did her part to make sure we don't forget the real human casualties of these G-O-TEA manufactured crises.

Remember that the shutdown comes on top of the ugly sequester cuts imposed earlier this year, and mostly to the exact same discretionary domestic spending programs. To the cold hearts and closed minds on the right, neither matters. In fact, Sen. Ron Johnson, a member of the growing Default Denier Caucus within his own party (it overlaps quite a lot with the Stupid Caucus), told MSNBC Thursday that just as President Obama is fear-mongering on the danger of a debt default – he called it a “cash management” problem), he had also exaggerated the impact of sequester cuts.

Also keep in mind that the sequester cuts are currently baked into the “clean” continuing resolution that the Senate has passed repeatedly. That’s a compromise on the Democrats’ part that is mostly ignored by the media. [...]

On top of the 800,000 federal workers furloughed, who will miss three paychecks if the House GOP deal is accepted, food banks are now reporting shortages, since the Emergency Food Assistance program is closed. North Carolina has entirely suspended its Women, Infants and Children nutrition program because it relied so heavily on federal funding, and other states are likely to follow. Ironically red states are feeling the shutdown most because they get so much federal funding, but since the impact is mainly on poor people, they don’t care.

The G-O-TEA Shutdown Sh*tfest has already cost America $2 billion in economic output. And with each additional day of this unnecessary drama, we lose another $160 million in economic output. If this extreme austerity experiment continues, what's already an economic gut punch will soon become economic strangulation.

Earlier today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Searchlight Strong) and other Senate Democrats reminded Republicans of the simple task they need to complete to let the people's government reopen for business. So did President Obama. And now, a critical mass of Americans are crying for them to do the right thing. It's long past time for Republicans to free this nation from the manufactured crisis they forced us into.

If they don't end this Shutdown Sh*tfest soon, they'll lose more than just this political fight.