MSGA- Make Shutdowns Great Again

 The average American cares little for supporting the bloated and gargantuan monkey that has become our government. By way of the record, there have been twenty-one federal government shutdowns since 1974.These are periods when non-essential federal operations halted due to lapsed appropriations, leading to furloughs of federal employees. But in point of fact, the average American wants to live safely, drive over roads that do not crater, save, and buy things for his family and to see taxes and utilities low.

But government, in its present form, could care less.

Actually, the Federal government's budget process is highly complex and a difficult to understand process in many ways. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974, signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon, created an October 1 to September 30 federal fiscal year. Theoretically, this structure is to improve fiscal management and transparency for government operations. It supposedly is to allow more time for Congress and the President to plan and be more efficient in its spending. "One of the primary benefits of this fiscal period is its alignment with the federal budgeting process, which involves collecting taxes, accepting funding requests, creating budget proposals, and routing these proposals to Congress. This structured timeline ensures that the government can manage its financial activities without the rush and confusion that might accompany a calendar year-end. The flexibility of fiscal years, varying significantly between organizations and countries, allows entities to tailor their financial reporting and budgeting to their specific needs. For the federal government, this means a smoother, more predictable financial planning process that ultimately benefits taxpayers." (https://selectgcr.com/government-contracts/understanding-the-gov-fiscal-year-key-differences-benefits-over-the-calendar-year/). In review of the litany of overspending, waste, fraud, and abuse over decades, one can only question how fiscal management has improved and how much transparency has been seen over the past 52 years of this bill, especially in light of what DOGE found in wasteful spending over the past year.

However, it is being increasingly apparent to those same average working Americans that the bloat, arrogance, and ineptitude of government is something they can certainly live without and stop paying for. This clarity is now evident to these folks to where they now see a minority out of touch with reality Democrat Party shutting the government down by their refusal to vote for a continuing resolution to keep the government open until November. Apparently, the dysfunctional and incompetent Democrat Party is now led by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who emphasizes all of the characteristics of a tin-horn politician by criticizing President Trump and Republicans in the hope of effecting a more palatable budget on one hand, while simultaneously fighting off the far-left lunatics in his own party who do not want for him to work out any agreement whatsoever with Republicans or with any semblances of sanity and fiscal responsibility on the other. This double-mindedness and lack of resolve on his part leads us to the fact that this truly is a “Schumer Shutdown.” But the whole idea of Democrats reasoning at all is false. The Democrat Party will not accept any cuts to their failed Obama Care-Biden program that temporarily extended premium subsidy eligibilities to those with income above 400% of the federal poverty level thereby taking away health care subsidies originally intended for those with lesser means.  It has been reported by Ge Bai, Professor of Accounting and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University that these subsidies are indeed, bulbous and out of control: "A family of four in Arizona making $600,000, a married couple in West Virginia making $580,000, and a single individual in Vermont making $180,000.." (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/democrats-demand-return-of-bidenomics-ba452006). How was this situation ever allowed to come into being?

Perhaps one of the reasons such a situation came into existence was due to the yammering of fiscally-brainless politicians such as Connecticut's Socialist/Radical/Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, who actually uttered this gem: "I join with my colleagues in wanting this new budget to, at the very least, postpone the health care insurance increases that are coming for millions of Americans, that are going to ruin people’s lives in this country. 75 percent increases for people that are going to make this awful decision about whether they should continue to pay their premiums, whether they should put food on the table for their kids, or whether they should risk going without insurance. I think that’s a pretty reasonable ask - just don’t increase costs on families when it comes to health care, at a time when the cost of everything else is going up because of President Trump’s insane economic policies. But let me ask you this as well:  Why would we not also simply say that any budget we pass should stop the worst of the lawlessness? Stop the deployment to our cities. Stop the witch hunt of Comey and Soros and Senator Schiff. Stop using the FCC to censor speech. Stop unconstitutionally ignoring the budget, and spending only money that the President wants to spend.

To me this is simple. We should not willingly pay the bills for the most serious assault on political freedom since the Civil War - an assault that may collapse American democracy as we know it."  (https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-the-senate-should-not-fund-democracys-destruction) 

The mad ramblings of Chris Murphy proceed quickly from insurance costs to Witch hunts to his real reason for living being his serial hatred of all things Donald Trump. Chris Murphy will never address the Biden Witch hunts against President Trump and all things Republican. He will continue to rant and rave about these same medical care programs such as Obama Care that his party shoved down the throats of Americans and their lack of affordability. Since Chris Murphy obviously does not pay for health insurance Chris Murphy does not understand how horrific our health insurance costs have become. Hasn't the Democrat Party "ruined people’s lives" enough times since the Obama Administration with its "affordable" health care programs? But what does Chris Murphy care? Chris Murphy pays for absolutely nothing himself and has never held gainful employment outside of politics.

However, as the shutdown or possibilities of the same proceed, hope springs eternal that the farcical bloat of a large part of government could mercifully be starved out due to a lack of taxpayer support. Could such a blessing come to Connecticut? In fact, many decent taxpaying citizens of Connecticut would love nothing more than to see the Democrat-run Connecticut government shut down and be starved out. Just think of the wonders of that scenario: No more billions of dollars wasted on an inept and largely inoperative administrative state. The starvation of DEEP. The CT-DOT being forced to act in an efficient manner having no excess funds to waste on administrators and superfluous bureaucrats and cronies and make-work obstructive and redundant construction projects. The merciful abolishment of the failed/should be abolished CT-DECD, thus saving the multi-millions of dollars wasted or pilfered by legislators throwing money at useless, inefficient, and redundant nonprofits. and laughable “economic development” initiatives such as the “Connecticut Pizza Trail.” The Legislature, without free-liquor and consequent DWIs by legislators finally giving way to people actually wanting to be sober and represent their constituents. A world without nebulous and shadowy organizations such as ADVANCECT, 4-CT, “QUANTUMCT” and a whole litany of (fill-in-the-blank) “CTs” redundantly doing some form of government but being entirely non-transparent and somehow feeding cronies on the Lamont food chain or other politically-connected individuals. (My friend and colleague Tony De Angelo covered this subject quite well on the October 2, 2025 edition of THIRTY WITH TONY “The Price of Idiocy” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrG0jrDwGFM )

As Louis Armstrong said years ago in song, what a wonderful world that would be.

But in returning to the Federal shutdown, the solution is the same solution that has been offered repeatedly. Congress needs to adopt an automatic continuing resolution to keep agencies open at prior funding levels until a new budget is passed each year. This resolution would take the political grandstanding and political blame game out of the equation. It allows for a functional discussion on what needs and does not to be paid for by United States Taxpayers. It provides for a coherent flow of the operations of government. But can this ever happen again in our current political environment with the hatred by the Democrat Party and of all things President Trump growing hourly over anything he does or says. In fact, can we actually govern anymore? Or is the real threat to Democracy the likes of Chris Murphy and his ego driven, self-centered, leftist Democrat Party and their desire to destroy any opposing voices in our society taking our society along with it?

Let the government shutdown continue and let us truly reform how our federal government spends Taxpayers monies. Let us force-feed fiscal responsibility to government as government is continually unwilling to do that in and of itself. Let's actually have a real federal budget for the entire fiscal year once and for all.  Let us actually have transparency in our government. And let us keep the happy vision in Connecticut of burning down the waste, fraud, abuse, and self-dealing so that this state can once again be safe, affordable, and livable.

Isn't that all a small price to save Democracy?