Congress to shutdown again? MASS HYSTERIA!! Or is it?

One would have thought that an entire government shutdown would have been a wake up call for congress to get their act together given that their approval rating have been at it's lowest point in history. But it turns out that congress might stoop to even lower levels in the eyes of the American public as they return from summer reccess with another big decision ahead of them which is either figure out how to fund the federal goverment before the September 30th deadline or the United States will endure it's second goverment shutdown in three years. Many people today are disgruntled and dissapointed in how congress is performing and some, mostly under the age of 30, think this is a new phenomenon but history has shown that this is far from it and it also shows that history is not on congress' side.

One would think that with a deadline approaching congress can easily to come to an agreement but it's a little more complicated than that. The way the congressional budget proccess works is that both the house and senate are presented 12 seperate spending bills for various agencies and programs around the government. Both the house and the senate have to pass all 12 bills and then all those bills must be signed by the president before the federal spending authority's expiration date. That's what congress has to go through on an annual basis and since 1997 they've never met the deadline. The only reason congress neve shutdown as often as it has recently is because lawmakers pass a series of temporary funding measures and combine most of the funding into a single spending package. 

So far this year the house has passed only a handful of these bills with numerous Obama veto threats  with reasons ranging from cuts in funding to disputes over policy and the senate passed none of them. Obama believes that a government shudown would be irresponsble but if congress passes bills that he feels that are short sighted that tend to harm our military or economy then he will veto it. Meanwhile republicans feel that Obama and the democrats are speding too much and all they want to do is increase that spending. The younger generations, those born after 1990, might be thinking this has never happened before. All I can say is not only has this happened before the number of times it has happened is close to or greater the number of years we've been alive.

Prior to 1974 the US had no way of establishing a coherrant budget. Then President Nixion signed into law the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act with the goal of creating institutions to help Congress prepare the budget. However Congress has shown that it can't come together and prepare a budget as the government has been shut down eighteen times since 1976 with the most recent being in 2013. It didn't matter if the republicans or the democrats were in control the government has shut down nearly half the time in 40 years and for a number of reasons including abortion, nuclear power and possibly the more recently planned parenthood. 

Right now congress is playing a dangerous game with the American public and it's approval rating but the solution is not as simple as it looks and I feel that we are too harsh on our Congress because while we are told congress hasn't done anything through the media within Capitol Hill they are working their tails off to get it done. So in the end we should treat congress the way we would want to be treated even if it is cliche.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/here-is-every-previous-government-shutdown-why-they-happened-and-how-they-ended/
http://www.gallup.com/poll/180113/2014-approval-congress-remains-near-time-low.aspx
http://pgpf.org/issues/spending/2014/07/qa-congressional-budget-and-impoundment-control-act-of-1974
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/09/07/congress-returns-spending-crisis-fears-government-shutdown/71657516/