Have at it: Who’s to blame for government shutdown?

By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — Of course, John Boehner is right. So say a lot of people who stand by the Republican speaker of the House’s stand.

Harry Reid and Barack Obama, well, they’re right, too. Plenty of Americans, the ones who think Boehner and fellow Republicans are so wrong, will tell you that.

It’s so clear, isn’t it? The people to blame for the federal government shutdown are those lousy so-and-sos.

Bob Dylan in “One too Many Mornings” said it best, as he so often does: You are right from your side, I am right from mine.

Sure, there’s plenty of political theater going on in this latest staging of Dysfunction in America, as  Sheila Krumholz, executive director for campaign finance tracker the Center for Responsive Politics, told Wisconsin Reporter earlier this week.

“A significant part of this is political theater, and anytime there is a good show on you can expect a good response from the people,” she said of the campaign fundraising boom the shutdown has wrought.

But there are core principles fueling the fight, something that shouldn’t be discounted.

Conservatives hate Obamacare. They see the Affordable Care Act, the massive overhaul of the U.S. health care system, as a train wreck happening right before a debt-ridden nation’s eyes. They see it as an overreach of federal authority, and a pox on the basic values of the free-market system.

So, they have demanded the law be defunded, or at least delayed, while some key issues are cleaned up in the federal health care exchanges, and they’re using the federal budget for that vehicle. It’s only fair, they say. After all, President Barack Obama in July decided to delay implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate for big business. Why shouldn’t individuals expect the same treatment? Republicans have offered several smaller bills to keep portions of the government operational, but they have stood their ground on stalling Obamacare.

Democrats, led in Congress by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, beg to differ of course. They love Obamacare. They believe it’s a good law, that it will bring health insurance to the millions of Americans who have none, making health care more affordable and accessible to the average American. They believe Republicans are throwing a political temper tantrum, holding the federal government “hostage” because they didn’t get their way on a law that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld.

They are to blame.

No, they are to blame.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on from D.C.’s 1st Street SE to main streets all across the country.

But we ask you, who’s to blame for the partial federal government shutdown, now lumbering into its fourth day?

Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@watchdog.org

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