“You do not get to mistreat people without consequences.”
Anan
The failure of Congress to meet its mandated September 30th Federal budget deadline, exacerbated by Mike Johnson and his Republican House colleagues being AWOL from Congress, has led to a thirty-eight-day and counting government shutdown. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, the state legislature in now some four-plus month late in missing its June 30th budget deadline.
In the private sector, where most people work, such irresponsibility would likely result in the accountable persons being sacked … not so in government!
The unwillingness of these legislators to do their jobs in a timely manner is now materially affecting millions of Americans as well as many state and municipal governments and school districts.
Hundreds of thousands of government employees have been furloughed or even fired while others are being forced to work without being paid; leaving them scrambling to pay for food, their mortgages, rental housing, car payments and health care costs. Non-profits which provide support networks for the most vulnerable in our society are on the verge of closing as is at least one Pennsylvania school district and airline safety is being compromised.
Yet, the elected fat cats on Capitol Hill and in Harrisburg are feeling no pain.
Trying to convince our elected representatives “compromise” is not a four-letter-word and generally in the best interests of the people they purportedly represent falls on deaf ears.
Consider how timely and responsibly they might act if, on day-one after a budget deadline was missed, their legislative and executive salaries were suspended during the impasse, after thirty-days such salaries would be forfeited, and after sixty-days, their taxpayer-funded health care benefits would be interrupted.
Unfortunately, as with enacting legislative term limits, relying on sitting legislators who would have pass such self-disciplining laws is an exercise in futility … the public be damned!
