As is often the case, I have only the slimmest idea of what's going on with this whole government shutdown thing. The blog posts I've been reading have been doing a lot less explaining the situation and a lot more guessing who will get blamed if it happens. Latest polls apparently show that people will either blame the Democrats or share the guilt.
So, someone tell me if my understanding is about right:
The deficit, which obviously has existed for ages and been going up for ages, but which I don't remember being such a hot political issue prior to this year, is suddenly OMG SO BAD WE HAVE TO FIX IT. Therefore, the Republicans are demanding a certain number in cuts, regardless of what gets cut, without raising taxes, and aren't willing to compromise down, and in fact keep raising the number. The cuts are mostly from discretionary spending, which makes up a tiny percentage of the government, and they're politically charged, like cutting Planned Parenthood, while making little impact on the deficit in the long term.
The budget discussions leave in things like the corporate loopholes which allowed GE to pay no taxes at all last year, and the Bush tax cuts, so they take essential services from the most needy in society to benefit the most wealthy.
Do I about have the gist of it?
Because if that's the case, yeah, it's the Republican's fault.
(Pardon the lack of citations. I wrote this off the top of my head before class and didn't have time to go looking for links.)
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