Oh Joy! No Government Shutdown

In the annals of incompetent government, this week's big dispute between the Republicans in the House and the Democrats in the Senate about how to fund government operations and disaster relief has to rank high on the list. Because of the incompetence of the Obama Administration, we almost had a government shutdown. Here's what happened: For months, the Obamacrats told Congress that they needed extra money to allow FEMA to continue with its disaster relief programs through the end of the fiscal year which also happens to be the end of this week. When House majority leader Eric Cantor said that any increase in disaster relief ought to be paid for, the Democrats pounced. Cantor and the Republicans were hare hearted ogres. How could they possible want to pay for the disaster relief when people were hurting. It was totally heartless. Despite the caterwauling from the Democrats, the GOP passed a spending bill in the House that covered all government operations for six weeks and also added the needed funds for FEMA. The GOP bill paid for the extra FEMA funds by cutting the program that brought us the Solyndra scandal, a program that Harry Reid had favored cutting in the past. Since this is already the run-up to the election, the Democrats went crazy in their criticism of the Republicans. Imagine, the Republicans want to pay for disaster relief, something that had never been done in the past. Of course, the Democrats never bothered to note that what happened in the past gave us 14 trillion dollars of debt. The Democrats in the Senate threatened to shut down the government unless those pesky Republicans recanted their crazed desire to actually pay for the spending.

As the rhetoric and the decibel levels rose, the spending bill got nowhere fast. Then, there was a sudden breakthrough. It was disclosed yesterday that the information being furnished to Congress by the Obama Administration was wrong. FEMA was not running out of money. There was no need for extra funding at this time. As a result, there is no longer any dispute in Congress and we got to see Harry Reid's channeling of Emily Litella. As Reid smiled and said "Nevermind", the rest of the country got to see the fabled Obamacrat incompetance in action. This time, Obama and his people nearly caused the entire federal government to shut down. Next time, they may affect something important.