Shutdown

I sit here waiting for the last vestiges of sanity in the House Republican caucus to please take control. So far, there's no sign that will happen.

When the government shuts down, my staff will be partially furloughed. I get to rotate some people in every day to perform excepted tasks. I am excepted and so will not be furloughed. My people are lucky. Most of my agency is furloughed for the duration of the shutdown.

Of course, a shutdown will have a huge economic impact. Around 800,000 federal workers will stop getting paid. Many will cut back on purchases, including eating out, travel, buying household goods, even buying a new car or new house. This will have have an extended economic effect, affecting businesses in their community. Many workers are in danger of losing their car or house or pulling their kids from school. Since there are federal workers throughout the country, the economic effect will occur everywhere.

Stupidly, there are enough votes in the House to pass a clean funding bill if House Speaker Boehner would bring it up for a vote. He won't though, because of the few dozen Tea Party nihilists, who want to shut down the government, holding everything hostage.

Their condition for voting on funding, delay of Obamacare, would be laughable if it weren't so horribly evil.

The only way this gets better is if the American people wise up and throw out these jackasses in 2014.