Monday October 20, 2025.
I played golf yesterday. Sunny and 70. Pretty amazing for this time of year.
Government Shut Down
Ho Hum. The government shut down enters week 3. I posted earlier, Who Cares? And that was on day 6. Seems like a lifetime ago.
It’s overwhelming and in the end, what can we do?
And I’m partly OK with the shut down continuing. We have not managed our budget. We take in $5,256,232,011,575 in US federal tax revenue per year.
We then spend
More on debt interest than defense. That’s a bummer. The government’s debt is worse than our credit card debt.
And almost all of the tax revenue is spent on the top 4 items. That leaves almost nothing for the thousands of other programs.
So we borrow more
2 years ago, we were at $34 trillion. See the post here.
Spending
Lot’s of numbers, but the math is simple.
We bring in $5 trillion per year in taxes.
We spend $7 trillion in the official budget.
That’s $2 trillion added to the national debt each year because we need to borrow money to fund the gap.
And yup, that’s what we see. Our total debt was $34 trillion 2 years ago and 2 years later it is $38 trillion so about $2 trillion added to the debt each year.
Who is Responsible?
We are.
Huh?
Well, sort of. Congress, our elected representatives in the house and in the senate are 100% responsible for the budget.
I saw a survey recently where the US people largely blamed the president for the shut down.
President is a powerful position. Bu congress passes the budget. The Big Beautiful Bill. Love it or hate it, congress passed it. It’s the President’s agenda, but the house tweaked it and passed it. The senate did the same. They all voted and here we are.
Politics is nasty business. There are lots of back-room deals and compromises required to get anything done in Washington. Watch Veep. It is the closest thing to a documentary on American politics.
But regardless, we, the people, elect our congresspeople, whose job it is to wade through the quagmire and, among other things, create and manage the US Federal Budget.
Mixed Emotions
I said that I was partly OK with the shut down and that many feel like there is nothing they can do.
Something needs to change. Adding $2 trillion to the deficit each year is not a financially viable strategy.
On top of this, it’s not like we’re thrilled with the government to begin with. We have homeless people everywhere, we’re not taking care of our veterans. Our public transit stinks. It would be one thing if our people were well taken care of and we were all happily riding our way into the debt spiral, but that ain’t the case.
So something significant needs to happen and no politician at any level has made an effort to solve this. I’ve not found one, but please correct me if I’m off base.
But on the other hand, people are out of work. Important services are not available.
I wrote a post about online security and referenced www.identitytheft.gov as a great place to get info and to report a problem. Look what happens if you go there.
Sorry, we’re closed.
2 Things Can Be True
There is a lot of waste in the Government.
The Government provides many critical services.
I believe both are true.
So for me, the shut down isn’t good because it is shutting off important services and leaving folks without a paycheck.
But is the shut down necessary because we cannot find a way to manage our budget? We don’t have the money we’re spending.
Wrap Up
I can’t even tell you what the key points of contention are between democrats and republicans. What is preventing them from establishing a budget?
But I firmly believe that their fighting against one another and their refusal to compromise and develop a spending bill is hurting the American people.
We elected them to create a budget. They haven’t. Let them know you’re unhappy.
And vote with your feet in the next election. Go to the polls and vote for some fresh ideas.