When Children Throw A Tantrum…

I don’t intend to go into politics too much on this blog.  This is my professional writing blog, and I’m not sure how appropriate (or wise) political discussions are in that context.  That said, I gotta put my two cents in about this potential government shutdown.

I find it amusing, and illustrative, what’s going on.  In November, eight months after the President submitted his budget to Congress (who then proceeded to do nothing with it, you may recall), the American public elected adults to go to DC and stop the childish binge spending that’s been going on for the last near-decade, but especially the last three years.  And good on ’em, the adults are trying to do just that.  Predictably, all the entitled children in DC, who tried to talk a good game about fiscal responsibility during election season but who actually seem to oppose living within our means, are gnashing their teeth, whining, and throwing a tantrum about it.  And so it looks like the government will shut down.

This is a good thing.  Unless you actually work for the government (like I do), you will notice approximately zero impact on your life, as long as you turn off the news.  If I were President, I’d veto every budget, shut down the government for nine months to a year, then submit a new budget to Congress that matched what the government spent when it was only doing “essential” items.  And never restart the non-essentials.  No publicly funded organization should have employees, or do activities, that are non-essential.

As a military guy in real life, I’m not looking forward having my pay screwed up for a while.  But I’ll live.

Oh wait…

Just this morning, the local Navy Federal Credit Union branch manager confirmed that NFCU intends to put the full amount of their active duty military members’ directly deposited pay into their accounts on pay day next Friday, even though the government will only pay for services rendered up til April 8th.  NFCU will recoup the advance when the government starts back up and pays us our back pay.  I called USAA, and while they haven’t announced their plans yet, their upper management is discussing it, and they are WELL aware of what NFCU, their competitor, is doing.  I wouldn’t be surprised if USAA does soemthing similar.

Looks like the private sector is picking up the government’s slack yet again.

Standing by to receive flames in the comments.