Washington Did Something Last Night

I should have written about the mini scandals and happenings on the budget deal, but hey, witting about government incompetence all the time gets boring and tiring, this however, is different. Last night the House of Representatives passed a 2 year budget deal that would fund the government until October 2015. The bill was a compromise crafted by Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Patty Murray (D) with Rep. Paul Ryan (R), the House's own Budget Committee chair. In a bipartisan move that has become very rare on Capitol Hill, the House passed the bill 332-94, the Senate is to follow suit and the president has promised to sign the bill into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

The bill of course sets spending levels for 2014 at 1.012 trillion Dollars and 1.014 trillion for 2015. There is a 63 billion Dollars sequestration relief split evenly between military and other spending. There are other savings to Medicare and money saving going towards the deficit, but that amount is virtually nothing in the long run and is really there to give Ryan and Murray the chance to say that they have saved the country money. The bulk of the deal and what really matters is the spending levels for the coming two years, this deal will offer a long lasting economic and governmental stability and we will not be governed from crisis to crisis as we have for the last two years. This will give the economy a chance to strengthen itself unscathed by the cattiness between political parties in D.C. Also notable is the increase in spending, Republicans have stomached it, and Democrats got a lesser increase that they desired, a perfect compromise.

My only issue with the new budget deal, and it's big, is the fact that it did not expand unemployment relief. As a matter of fact, after Christmas a lot of people won't be able to collect those checks anymore. I understand that compromise is needed, and that in a divided government you cannot get everything you desire, but what makes first world nations different from other countries? It is because they take care of the weak in their country, including the unemployed, and we are definitely failing in that regard. The government, Democrats especially (Republicans never really cared) continue to fall in the trap of putting economic interest ahead of real people interests.

Despite that one major hiccup, the budget deal is good start on compromising and stabilizing the very rocky economy. Hopefully the United State congress will continue this bipartisan trend and work on things like Immigration, ENDA and maybe even on bettering the Affordable Care Act (Ha!). Congratulations to the people of the US, our government worked! And congratulation to Patty Murray and Paul Ryan on a job well done