Shutdown

The Trump Administration Is Warning That The U.S. Economy May Not Grow At All During The First Quarter Of 2019

This government shutdown is really starting to take a toll on the U.S. economy.  On Wednesday, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers made an absolutely stunning admission.  We all knew that the global economy was slowing down, and we all knew that U.S. economic activity was beginning to sputter, but up until this week the Trump administration had always insisted that we are not heading for a recession.  Well, all of that changed on Wednesday when Kevin Hassett publicly admitted that we could end up with zero GDP growth during the first quarter of 2019…

A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump told CNN on Wednesday that the US economy may show no growth in the first quarter if the federal government shutdown lasts much longer.

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett said in an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow that he was not overly worried about the long-term effects of a government shutdown. But after Harlow asked him if the United States could wind up with zero GDP growth this quarter, he conceded that it was possible. “We could, yes,” he said.

With much of the government currently closed, and with no end to the shutdown in sight, it is inevitable that the economic numbers for the first quarter are not going to look as good as they could have been.

But if this shutdown lasts for the entire quarter, that could easily push us into an economic contraction, and that would send shockwaves all over the planet.

And at this point there is definitely a possibility that this shutdown could go on for a couple more months.  Neither side intends to give in, and things are starting to get very personal.  On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi made it exceedingly clear that she will not allow President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol until the shutdown ends under any circumstances…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dug in Wednesday on her call to delay the State of the Union address even after President Trump vowed to proceed with the speech next week, sending a curt letter making clear she will not allow the event to take place during the government shutdown.

Reacting to Pelosi’s letter, Trump told reporters at the White House “we’ll do something in the alternative,” suggesting a speech of some kind will still happen next week.

This truly is unprecedented.

Donald Trump is the very first president in all of U.S. history to be “disinvited” from delivering the State of the Union address.

And the hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are not receiving paychecks right now are really starting to get restless.  A lot of them have been living paycheck to paycheck, and so missing a couple of paychecks is a really, really big deal to those people.  As Marketwatch recently noted, some of them are actually “turning to food banks to feed their families”…

Within just a few weeks into the government shutdown, people are struggling to cope. We hear stories about people turning to food banks to feed their families. We hear stories about people who are in dire straits because they can’t get loans. We hear stories about people who can’t pay their mortgages. That’s not even one month into the shutdown.

If something this minor can cause such widespread pain and suffering, what would we see if a real crisis actually hit this nation?

Of course the truth is that most Americans are simply not prepared to handle much of anything, and this is a point that Mac Slavo made quite well in one of his most recent articles…

Almost 60% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings for a rainy day fund or an immediate emergency. It’s been ten years since the Great Recession left many Americans jobless with no money, and it appears most have learned nothing. The government shutdown serves as a painful warning and preview for what will happen once unemployment rises from 50-year lows.  Americans are far too dependent on others, including the government, for their survival.

For now, many that are struggling financially due to this shutdown are trying to bridge the gap by going into more debt.

And if the shutdown doesn’t last too much longer, that might work for a lot of people.

But it is very dangerous to go into too much debt, and a large portion of the country has already crossed that line.  For example, one recent survey discovered that approximately a third of all Americans are “afraid they’ll max out their credit card when making a large purchase”…

Despite the dangers of high-interest loans, more consumers are testing the limits of plastic.

To that point, more than 1 in 3 people —or 86 million Americans — said they’re afraid they’ll max out their credit card when making a large purchase, according to a new WalletHub credit cards survey. (Most of those polled considered a large purchase as anything over $100.)

The only easy way out of this government shutdown would be for one of the two sides to completely fold, and that would be politically disastrous for whoever decides to do that.

The battle lines have been drawn, and this political game of chicken is going to go on until somebody blinks.

And if nobody blinks for a couple more months, the economic consequences of this government shutdown are likely to be quite severe.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the nation.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The Mainstream Media Warns America Will Be Facing An “Economic Hellscape” If The Government Shutdown Continues

Is the mainstream media overhyping the economic impact of the government shutdown for political purposes?  Of course they are.  Once upon a time the mainstream media in the United States at least attempted to maintain a facade of objectivity, but those days are long gone.  In this case, they want to stir up as much public resentment against President Trump as possible in order to try to force him to end the government shutdown.  And when NBC News breathlessly declared that the U.S. “would face an economic hellscape” if this shutdown stretches on for an extended period of time, their article quickly went viral all over the Internet.

But will it really be “an economic hellscape”?

Here are some of the things that they say we will be facing in their “doomsday scenario”…

  • 38 million low-income Americans lose food stamps
  • 6 million face an uncertain timetable for collecting tax refunds
  • 2 million without rental assistance and facing possible eviction
  • 800,000 paycheck-less federal employees plunged into dire financial straits
  • Shuttered parks and museums while overstressed airports cause tourism to tank
  • Federal court system slows to a crawl
  • Disaster relief money doesn’t get to storm-ravaged areas

Yes, things would certainly be unpleasant for a lot of people, and there would be a whole lot of anger around the country.

But such a scenario does not qualify as “an economic hellscape”.  I would encourage the folks over at NBC News to pick up a copy of The Beginning Of The End if they really want to know what the initial phases of a major economic crisis scenario could look like in this nation.

The most alarming item on their list is the fact that 38 million Americans could soon lose access to food stamps.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that will officially happen by the end of February…

By the end of February, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, run by the Department of Agriculture, would be out of funding — meaning almost 40 million low-income Americans could find themselves struggling to pay for food, said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US.

Things would certainly be tough for a lot of low income people, and there would be a lot more traffic at shelters and food banks, but nobody would starve to death.

The worst case scenario would be if mobs of angry people started taking to the streets and rioting in large urban areas.  That is definitely a possibility, especially if this shutdown lasts for several more months.

But for the moment, most of the focus is on the hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are not getting paychecks right now.  We are being endlessly bombarded with sob stories about how much these workers are suffering after missing one paycheck.

If people can’t handle going a couple of weeks without pay, how are they going to handle things when a real crisis erupts in this country?

With no end to the shutdown in sight, some lower paid federal workers have decided that it is time to find a new job…

Transportation Security Agency officers forced to work without knowing when their next paycheck is coming are no longer just calling in sick. Now, 18 days into the partial government shutdown, some are resigning, according to Hydrick Thomas, who heads the TSA Council on the American Federation of Government Employees.

“Every day I’m getting calls from my members about their extreme financial hardships and need for a paycheck. Some of them have already quit and many are considering quitting the federal workforce because of this shutdown,”  the official said in a statement posted to the union’s website on Tuesday.

I can’t say that I blame TSA workers too much for quitting.  It is an absolutely miserable job, and the starting salary for TSA security officers is somewhere “between $25,000 to $30,000 a year”.

Of course we don’t actually need a TSA at all.  Many of us would love to go back to the days before 9/11 when we could get on flights without having someone inspect our private areas.

Another aspect of the shutdown that is horrifying NBC News is the fact that no new beers are being approved right now…

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is out during the shutdown. That means the federal government will not approve beer labels or process permits, which translates into no new beers.

At this moment there are literally millions of people around the world that actually have nothing to eat and no clean water to drink, and this is what we are whining about?

I have an idea.  Why don’t we shut down the “Alchohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau” permanently and let people make beer without having to get permission from the federal government first?

As I have proposed, we could save enormous amounts of money by simply shutting down useless government agencies that we do not need.

But that would make far too much common sense to work in America in 2019.  We live at a time when the American people expect the federal government to protect them from just about every potential danger that you can possibly imagine.

Look, I don’t want to seem completely unsympathetic to the plight of all of these federal workers that are being used as pawns in this game of political brinkmanship.  Because 78 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, that means that a lot of these federal workers are not going to be able to pay their bills, and that would be extremely stressful for anyone.  And at this point, thousands of federal workers have already begun filing for unemployment benefits…

More than 4,700 federal employees filed for unemployment in the last week of December, compared with 929 the week prior, according to the Department of Labor. There is no federal data available yet for the first week of January. Unemployment rules vary by state; generally the government provides benefits to eligible workers who have lost a job “through no fault of their own,” for a maximum of 26 weeks.

But the mainstream media is blowing things way out of proportion when they start using phrases such as “economic hellscape”.

Yes, this shutdown is going to cause some significant pain for a lot of people, but it is definitely not the end of the world.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

 

78 Percent Of Americans Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck – Including Many Government Workers Affected By The Shutdown

In just a few days, this will officially be the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight.  President Trump is pledging that he will not sign any spending bill unless it includes funding for a border wall, and the Democrats are promising their supporters that they will never agree to a single penny for a wall.  This could be the confrontation that ends up defining Trump’s presidency, and whoever backs down now is going to look incredibly weak.  But the longer this shutdown lasts, the more painful things are going to become for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are going without pay, and for the hundreds of thousands of workers that are employed by government contractors that rely on business from the federal government.

You should never play a game of chicken with somebody that is crazier than you are.  In this case, it looks like both sides fully expect the other party to blink first, but the truth is that neither side is likely to yield any time soon.

So the days ahead are likely to be exceedingly painful for most federal workers, because just like the population as a whole, most of them are living paycheck to paycheck.

In fact, one survey found that 78 percent of American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck…

Government workers are far from alone in feeling stressed about not getting paid. Nearly 80 percent of American workers (78 percent) say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder. Women are particularly vulnerable: 81 percent of them report living paycheck to paycheck, compared with 75 percent of men.

As I have repeatedly stressed, living paycheck to paycheck is something that you do not want to do if at all possible.  When you live paycheck to paycheck, you are just one major disaster away from financial ruin.  For example, if somebody in your family has a major accident or a significant medical emergency, it can quickly render you completely destitute.

That same survey also discovered that 70 percent of all workers are currently in debt…

Just more than 70 percent of all respondents say that they’re in debt, and a quarter of workers say they weren’t able to make ends meet at the end of every month of the past year.

If you are scrambling to make debt payments every month and you have no financial cushion to fall back on, then you have no room for error, and that is where most Americans find themselves today.

So for most federal workers, this government shutdown is not just an inconvenience.

According to Professor Paul Light, somewhere around 800,000 government workers are currently going without pay…

The shutdown has left approximately 800,000 federal workers in financial limbo. Around 420,000 “essential” employees are working without pay, while another 380,000 have been ordered to stay home, according to calculations provided to CNBC by Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

Of course the mainstream media is going to be filled with sob stories from these workers for as long as this shutdown lasts.  For instance, CNN recently profiled the plight of TSA security officer Jessica Caraballo…

The partial government shutdown that began December 22 left Caraballo and 420,000 other federal workers across the country forced to work without a paycheck. Two weeks have passed and dozens of families like the Caraballos have put their lives on hold.

“Rent is due, light bill, gas bill, my car bill is due the 26th,” Caraballo said. “I already got my last paycheck and there’s no paycheck to come.”

“I don’t know when we would be able to celebrate birthdays, when we would be able to get ahead,” she added. “This is a pushback.”

Without a doubt things are tough right now for families like the Caraballos, but what will they do when a real national emergency strikes?

As we watch all the chaos that a minor disruption has created, it should cause all of us to realize that any sort of a major disruption could be extremely catastrophic for most of the country.

The vast majority of us are deeply, deeply dependent on the system.  That is fine and dandy as long as the system is functioning well, but what if someday it stops functioning altogether?

For the moment, many government workers can just pile up more debt to get through this short-term crisis.  Of course many of them are already drowning in debt, and we just learned that U.S. consumer borrowing was up another 22 billion dollars during the month of November.

However, if this shutdown lasts for another month or two, the mood of this nation is going to get quite sour, and that will especially be true once the food stamp benefits run out…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP at the federal level, is one of the agencies unfunded during the partial government shutdown. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Tuesday that SNAP would be funded through February, thanks to the funding bill that expired on Dec. 22, which included a provision allowing federal agencies to make obligated payments to support certain programs for 30 days after its expiration date.

Can you imagine the uproar that we would see if 38 million people were suddenly cut off from food stamps?

I think that the left is counting on that as negotiating leverage if they need it.

At this point we do not know how the political gridlock in Washington will end.  Today, President Trump walked out of a meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi when Pelosi told him point blank that there will be no money for a wall.  At this point there does not seem to be any room for a compromise, and it will be politically disastrous for either side to back down now.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of government workers are going to be hurting, and the pain will intensify with each passing day.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Government Shutdown? 36 Facts Which Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running

The West Front of the U.S. CapitolAll of this whining and crying about a “government shutdown” is a total joke.  You see, there really is very little reason why this “government shutdown” cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running.  63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this “shutdown”.  Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual.  It turns out that the definition of “essential personnel” has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered “essential” at this point.  In fact, this shutdown is such a non-event that even referring to it as a “partial government shutdown” would really be overstating what is actually happening.  The following are 36 facts which prove that almost everything is still running during this government shutdown…

#1 According to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, 85 percent of all government activities are actually being funded during this “government shutdown”.

#2 Approximately 1,350,000 “essential” federal employees will continue to work during this “government shutdown”.

#3 Overall, 63 percent of the federal workforce will continue to work during this “government shutdown”.

#4 The U.S. Postal Service will continue to deliver our mail.

#5 U.S. military personnel will remain on duty and will continue to get paid.

#6 Social Security recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#7 Medicare recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#8 Medicaid recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#9 Food stamp recipients will continue to get their benefits.

#10 Those on unemployment will continue to get their benefits.

#11 Federal retirees will continue to get their pensions.

#12 The federal school lunch program has enough money to go through at least the end of this month.

#13 Public schools all over the country will continue to stay open.

#14 Almost all federal law enforcement officials will continue working.

#15 The Federal Reserve will remain “completely functional“.

#16 The Supreme Court will continue to operate normally and federal courts have enough money to keep going for at least two weeks.

#17 TSA employees will continue to molest travelers at our airports.

#18 Air traffic controllers will continue to monitor traffic at our airports.

#19 Hopelessly outmanned border patrol agents will continue to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

#20 Visas and passports will continue to be issued by the State Department.

#21 The Veterans Administration will continue to offer substandard medical services, and it will be able to continue processing benefit payments at least for now.

#22 The Obama administration apparently has plenty of money to spend on closing open-air memorials that are usually open to the public 24 hours a day.

#23 The Department of Defense announced the awarding of 94 new contracts worth a combined total of more than 5 billion dollars on September 30th – the day right before the “government shutdown”.

#24 The “government shutdown” has not prevented the new two billion dollar NSA spy center from opening up.

#25 Federal prisons will continue to operate normally.

#26 Amtrak trains will continue to run.

#27 The Patent and Trademark Office will be open.

#28 The Consumer Product Safety Commission will continue to issue product recalls if the products “create an immediate threat to the safety of human life“.

#29 The National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center will continue to track weather patterns.

#30 If the federal government needs to respond to a natural disaster, this “shutdown” will not affect that.

#31 NASA will continue to support the Mars Rover and the two American astronauts up on the International Space Station.

#32 All city employees of the D.C. government have been deemed “essential” and will continue to go to work.

#33 Even though the Obamacare exchanges are not working properly, people will still be able to access them.

#34 The IRS will continue to collect taxes, but it will be suspending punitive audits of conservative organizations.

#35 Barack Obama will continue to get paid for the full duration of this “shutdown”.

#36 The U.S. Congress will continue to get paid for the full duration of this “shutdown”.

Of course not everything is operating normally during this government shutdown.  Government parks are closed.  The EPA and the Department of Energy have almost totally closed up shop.  But overall, most Americans are not going to notice much of a difference.

And perhaps now is a good time for the American people to evaluate whether or not they actually need a gigantic federal government that wastes enormous mountains of our money.

For example, our federal government recently spent $98,670 to construct a single outhouse in Alaska.

That is more than a lot of Americans pay for their entire houses.

For many more examples like this, please see my previous article entitled “The Waste List: 66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money“.

It is about time that Washington D.C. started experiencing some of the “belt-tightening” that the rest of the country has been going through.  For far too long, the fatcats in D.C. have been living in an alternate reality where they have been able to live the high life at our expense.  A recent blog post by Daniel Greenfield discussed how this shutdown is going to affect the alternate reality that the Obamas have been living in…

The government shutdown has forced Obama to make do with only a quarter of his 1,701 person staff. That would leave 436 “vital” employees. The 90 people who look after his living quarters would be slashed to 15 to “provide minimum maintenance and support”.

Buckingham Palace, which is twelve times the size of the White House and has its own clockmaker, only has an 800 person staff. King Harald V of Norway and his court make do with 152 staffers. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden gets by with 203.

On Twitter, Michelle Obama announced that she is unable to Tweet on her own without the aid of all of her sixteen assistants; many of whom take home six figure salaries. There are more directors, associate directors and deputy associate directors on Michelle Obama’s staff than there were in George Washington’s entire administration.

Presidents have fought wars and made peace, explored and annexed vast territories and built a nation out of a handful of colonies with fewer senior staffers than are needed to handle Michelle Obama’s Twitter account.

Oh the humanity!  Will Michelle Obama ever tweet again?  And how will the White House continue to function without at least one projectionist on duty at the White House 24 hours a day?

No wonder Barack Obama is so upset about this shutdown.

In the end, this shutdown could turn out to be very good for America.  We have a government that is wildly out of control and that desperately needs to be reigned in.

During the Obama administration, federal debt held by the public has risen by 90 percent, and overall federal government spending has risen by a whopping 317 percent since 1990.

So is it really a bad thing that the federal government has been forced to cut back for a little while?

Our politicians can whine and cry all they want.  They won’t be getting any sympathy from me.

Shut It Down?

If the U.S. government were to shut down for a while, would that really be such a bad thing?  Right now everyone in the mainstream media is freaking out as if the world is going to end, but the truth is that there have been government shutdowns before.  The apocalypse is not going to happen if there is another shutdown.  If Congress could find a way to get our troops and our border patrol agents paid, then what would be so bad about the government taking a “vacation” for a while?  After all, when was the last time that either the Republicans or the Democrats did anything that was actually good for America?  It has not mattered which political party has been in power – over the past couple of decades our “representatives” in Washington D.C. have passed an endless parade of bad laws and have gotten us into the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  They literally seem unable to do anything right.  So would it really be so bad if a government shutdown slows them down for a while?  If our politicians are going to act like a bunch of idiots, why not let them shut it down?

Think of it this way – if you could eliminate all of the laws passed under George W. Bush and Barack Obama would you do it?

I think that most Americans would.

Almost every single law that has been passed over the past couple of decades has been bad for America.

But many Americans seem to be going into a panic at the thought that the “almighty government” might not be operating for a few days.

Many Americans seem to have bought into the lie that the federal government is the most important institution in our country.

But this is never what our founding fathers intended.  Our founding fathers intended for the federal government to be very limited.  Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on the principles of our founding fathers.

So exactly what is this fight between the Republicans and the Democrats all about?  Why have we been brought to the brink of a government shutdown?

We keep hearing that it is all about cutting the budget.  In fact, House Speaker John Boehner says that his party is “damn serious about it”.

But that is a joke.  The federal budget deficit for this year is going to be approximately $1.6 trillion dollars.  The Republicans were asking for just $61 billion in budget cuts (3.8% of the budget deficit) and there are rumors that Republican and Democratic negotiators have agreed to a figure of $38 billion in budget cuts.

$38 billion?

Is this why the Tea Party was sent to Washington?

$38 billion would just be 2.4 percent of the $1.6 trillion dollar deficit.

Wow, that is really wielding the budget cutting axe!

Look, the U.S. government cannot spend a single penny from now on without Republicans going along with it.

The Republicans control the House of Representatives.  Barack Obama and the Senate will not have a single dime to spend unless they can get the House to go along with it.

If the Democrats want money to implement Obamacare then they have to get the Republicans to go along with it.

If the Democrats want to give money to the EPA to implement Obama’s “green agenda” then they have to get the Republicans to go along with it.

In fact, pretty much whatever the Democrats want to do, they have to get the Republicans to agree to fund it.

So if you don’t like what Obama and the Democrats are doing, don’t just blame them.

Blame the Republicans as well.

Both parties are deeply corrupt and both parties have gotten us to the point we are at.

Sadly, it looks like any deal that the Republicans and the Democrats are going to agree to is going to include virtually everything that the Democrats want.

It is going to include full funding for Obamacare.

It is going to include full funding for Planned Parenthood.

It is going to include full funding for NPR.

It is going to include full funding for the EPA.

So what are the Republicans going to get?

$38 billion in spending cuts?

Is that supposed to be a “deal”?

The truth is that Boehner is a joke and he is not serious about cutting the federal budget.

But if we don’t start seriously cutting the federal budget we are heading for complete and total disaster.

David Stockman, who served as budget director under Ronald Reagan, says that if Congress is not serious about getting our financial house in order that a government shutdown could be precisely the kind of wake up call that we need….

If the Smithsonian, the Parks Service and the Cherry Blossom Festival get delayed or canceled, it’s the wakeup call that we really needed. The fools inside the Beltway are borrowing $100 billion month in and month out, and there’s nobody left in the world buying except the central banks—the Fed and the people’s printing press of China. There’s no way that’s sustainable or viable. It’s simply building up pressure in the monetary system that’s going to blow sky-high.

Look, the United States is heading straight for financial armageddon.  This is a crisis of historic proportions.  In a previous article on U.S. government finances, I detailed some absolutely horrifying statistics about the debt crisis that the U.S. government is facing….

*If you divide the national debt up equally among all U.S. households, each one owes a staggering $125,475.18.

*The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

*During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

*In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.

*The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.

*The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.

*The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.

*The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.

*The U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

*Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

*If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  But this year alone the U.S. government is going to go about 1.6 trillion dollars more into debt.

*If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

But even if the Republicans got every single thing that they have been demanding it would make essentially no difference as far as our national debt crisis is concerned.  It would basically be like spitting into Niagara Falls.

So which political party has the correct position in this battle?

Neither of them.  In fact, both political parties are a joke.  They are both acting like a bunch of idiots just like they have been for decades.

So let them shut it down.  The truth is that the number one threat to our liberties and freedoms right now is our own federal government.

In a recent article, J.B. Williams talked about why he thinks that it would be a really good idea to shut the government down….

I say, shut it down! The federal government has done as much to harm the union of states as it has ever done to improve freedom and liberty in America. We will be better off without a federal government, with each state able to fund and govern itself better than the Fed ever could.

Extreme threats demand extreme measures, and nothing threatens the future freedom and prosperity of the United States more than our own federal government. Enemies beyond, we can deal with. It’s the enemy within which threatens us most today. It’s time to shut it down and reset.

Just think about a few of the ways that our own federal government violates our liberties and freedoms every single day….

*If you want to get on an airplane in America today, you must either go through one of the incredibly intrusive full body scanners that are going into all U.S. airports and let airport security goons gawk at your exposed body, or you must allow airport security goons to feel you up using the new “enhanced pat down” techniques they are being instructed to employ.

*Thanks to the Patriot Act, if you are identified as a “terrorist”, you suddenly lose all of your constitutional rights.  We are told that detaining American citizens indefinitely and subjecting them to “enhanced interrogation” techniques will keep us all safer.

*The federal government controls our lives so tightly that now they even tell us what kinds of light bulbs we are allowed to buy.

*Barack Obama has been pushing a plan that would create a national database that will store the DNA of all individuals who have been arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.

*Just about anything can be used against you in court these days.  In one of the very first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a U.S. military judge ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.

*The federal government listens to our cell phones whenever they want and they require that all cell phone companies must be able to pinpoint the locations of all of their customers to within 100 meters.

*According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent just as much of a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

*In Washington D.C., if you do not submit to “random bag checks” while riding the Metro there is a good chance that you could receive a follow-up visit by the FBI or by the Department of Homeland Security.

*If you make food “incorrectly” there is a good chance that you will get raided by the federal government.  In fact, the feds raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because they claimed that he was was engaged in the interstate sale of raw milk in violation of federal law.

So in light of how extreme our federal government has become, is there anyone out there that still thinks it would be a “crisis” if the government was to shut down for a while?

If our government is going to take away our liberties and freedoms instead of protecting them, then why would it be a bad thing if it shut down for a short time?

It might just get some of the control freaks off our backs for a while.

Yes, we do need to make sure our military men and women are paid.  We also need to make sure that our border patrol agents are paid.  But if Congress could actually get that accomplished it wouldn’t be too bad at all if the government were to shut down for an extended period of time.

So what do all the rest of you think?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion about the possibility of a government shutdown below….