Congress leaders reach deal to avoid government shutdown threat

[moonbladem]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats and Republicans in Congress reached a deal on Tuesday to fund federal government activities through next March and eliminate any threat of agency shutdowns that could upset voters ahead of the November 6 presidential and congressional elections

Comments

[sankaku_atama]

I still don't understand why Republicans, who have yet to fulfill the promise they made back in '10 to create jobs in even a single case, still have a chance to win anything at all, much less 'win big'.

Oh, wait, yes I do. The majority of this country is full of fucking fear-prone, sight-based, herd mentality, bigoted, ignorant, intolerant morons.

Every time someone mentions the words 'lame duck congress', I have an urge to go play Duck Hunt and somehow program every face of every congressperson on the ducks' heads.

[/ rant]

[awfulbliss]

They have a chance because unemployment 3 1/2 years into Obama's presidency is still over 8% after an $830 billion stimulus bill that promised otherwise (with lots of charts and if you didn't believe it you were totally dumb of course), among other things. Pretty simple really.

[awfulbliss]

How are you so sure? What constitutes a "total meltdown?" Most would agree that -- assuming some kind of collapse was inevitable -- TARP prevented a total meltdown, not the ARA. I don't recall much in the way of any apocalyptic scenarios if the ARA wasn't passed compared to TARP, anyway. If you mean a deepening recession, it's not really possible to know what would've happened in the absence of the stimulus. Any reasonable and serious person would acknowledge that the stimulus created some jobs and saved others, particularly in the public sector, but the stimulus was supposed to put us on track to produce thousands of jobs and grow the GDP each month, like past recovery efforts have. Surely just about anyone would concede that in that regard it has not been successful.