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Should There Be A Constitutional Amendment Forbidding a Shutdown?

Should There Be A Constitutional Amendment Forbidding a Shutdown?

  • Total voters
    21
aberrant85

aberrant85

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If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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There was no Government Shutdown. We already have measures in place to protect essential government services from being closed. Only 17% of the Government was shutdown.

The protections that you are pretending to support are already in place. That 17% of the government should already go away indefinitely. If they are non-essential then they are non-essential. In business you don't pay for non-essential items.

Maybe there should be a constitutional amendment that requires the government to shutdown until the Senate votes on a budget. If that were the case our government would have shutdown on October 1, 2009 and still wouldn't be open.

vasuderatorrent
 
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If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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What would happen if they didn't under this amendment?

vasuderatorrent said:
The protections that you are pretending to support are already in place. That 17% of the government should already go away indefinitely. If they are non-essential then they are non-essential. In business you don't pay for non-essential items.
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There are definitely cuts that need to be made, but just because these people were labeled non-essential in a short term shutdown doesn't mean they should be eliminated. Things like NASA and the National Parks and the Smithsonian shouldn't be permanently closed down. Best to look for cuts everywhere and not just in this area because non-essential in the shortrun does not mean non-essential forever.
 
vasuderatorrent said:
Are you suggesting that politicians have been lying to us?

vasuderatorrent
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Not about this. I think that's the message they were putting out there. The positions we could get by without for a short time were furloughed.
 
vasuderatorrent said:
In business you don't pay for non-essential items.
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That's not even remotely true. They're called "frills" and businesses pay for them all the time. Go to a Mexican restaurant. If they give you tortilla chips before your dinner for free, that is a non-essential item the business has paid for. Here is another example. Company X - sells product Y, company X gives away a stuffed animal with every purchase of product Y. That stuffed animal is a non-essential item the company has paid for in order to promote the sale of product Y. Again, non-essential items are paid for ALL the time by companies in order to promote their products and make their service/product more pleasant/noticeable/etc. You are simply wrong.
 
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Hatuey said:
Do you run a business? Because in my business we call non-essential items we pay for "frills" and yes we pay for them ALL the time. I'm guessing I just work for a bigger business than you do.
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The Federal Government has spent more money that it has taken in for 55 out of the last 60 years. I don't think they need to be spending money on frills.

I will admit though. You got me. Everybody spends money on extras from time to time.

vasuderatorrent
 
vasuderatorrent said:
The Federal Government has spent more money that it has taken in for 55 out of the last 60 years. I don't think they need to be spending money on frills.

I will admit though. You got me. Everybody spends money on extras from time to time.

vasuderatorrent
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Whether they should or shouldn't isn't what I wanted to address. I just wanted to make sure that as far as businesses go, they certainly do spend on non-essential stuff quite often.
 
Hatuey said:
Whether they should or shouldn't isn't what I wanted to address. I just wanted to make sure that as far as businesses go, they certainly do spend on non-essential stuff quite often.
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I agree.

vasuderatorrent
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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I voted no.If anything there should be a constitutional amendment to drastically cut spending to pay off and eliminate our debt and afterwards enact PAYGO with a rainy day budget for national emergencies such as natural disasters and when another country declares war on US(not when we declare war on another country).
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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Why forbid it? We should have a law that says all congressmen, senators and the President lose their jobs and retirement income, if they don't get a budget together.
 
Hatuey said:
Whether they should or shouldn't isn't what I wanted to address. I just wanted to make sure that as far as businesses go, they certainly do spend on non-essential stuff quite often.
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Trouble is, the FedGov isn't a business in the true sense. If it were, it would of seen it's demise after only a few bad years.
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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This is yet another time-wasting poll that solves nothing.

Funding the U.S. Government is already covered in the U.S. Constitution.

Read it when you have a few minutes.

We don't need more laws that only say that you have to obey the old laws - We just need to enforce the laws that are already in place.
 
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aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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Probably not. Its not the end of the world. I would like to see congressional salaries and offices back in their districts shut down too as non-essential.

BTW: I met a US Marine Staff Sargent over the weekend. He's had 2 deployments in Iraq, 3 in Afghanistan and 2 at sea. He's now attached to a smaller office associated with a reserve center. Because of the shutdown, their phones were disconnected and the CO's personal cell phone was the emergency contact number for his unit.

If there are any positive out of this, people asking the right question learned that past the politics, what ultimately caused the shutdown was congress refused to apply for another credit card to pay for our ongoing expenses. Living on perpetually increasing indebtedness is not now the country should operate. If our household budgets operated on getting a new loan every singly year, we'd be in trouble and would eventually face bankruptcy.
 
joG said:
Why forbid it?
We should have a law that says all congressmen, senators and the President lose their jobs and retirement income, if they don't get a budget together.
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Take a little time and read the U.S. Constitution.

We already have all of the laws that we need, they just need to followed and enforced.
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
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I think that both sides got what they wanted. No one wants to be caught voting for "Sequestration," but all the Congressmen know the cuts must be made. They can't be caught voting against the Military Offense budget and all the contributions from defense industries to our representatives in both houses of Congress. This allows cutting the Defense budget without getting blamed. That is what I think the shutdown was actually about. I am in favor of cutting Defense to the bone, because we have been all about Offense. The sequestration makes 10% cuts and if we have to give up some comparable domestic programs to accomplish those big Military Offense cuts, then so be it.
 
shrubnose said:
Take a little time and read the U.S. Constitution.

We already have all of the laws that we need, they just need to followed and enforced.
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Actually I know that the constitution is pretty strong in these things and we do not need to amend it at this point.

On the other hand, we do have a problem here and do need to make sure that the people we have made our agents do not put us in default. As it is not a question of whose fault it is, when a budget cannot be agreed or the National Debt is allowed to spiral out of control, we need some way to force the group to whom we have granted the job. This has not worked very well of late.
 
WCH said:
Trouble is, the FedGov isn't a business in the true sense. If it were, it would of seen it's demise after only a few bad years.
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I was just taking aim at the comparison between the government and a business. If people wanted to run the government as efficiently as businesses are run, we would have defaulted on our debt a long time ago or entered bankruptcy or any number of things which happen to over 50% of businesses within the first year. The freemarket is not the place to look at for guidelines on efficient expenditures.
 
Hatuey said:
That's not even remotely true. They're called "frills" and businesses pay for them all the time. Go to a Mexican restaurant. If they give you tortilla chips before your dinner for free, that is a non-essential item the business has paid for. Here is another example. Company X - sells product Y, company X gives away a stuffed animal with every purchase of product Y. That stuffed animal is a non-essential item the company has paid for in order to promote the sale of product Y. Again, non-essential items are paid for ALL the time by companies in order to promote their products and make their service/product more pleasant/noticeable/etc. You are simply wrong.
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Those chips aren't free, they just raised the price of all the rest of the food to cover their cost and therefore, whether you eat the chips or not, you're paying for them. The same with free refills on drinks. It costs them nothing because they charge you extra for the drink in the first place. If you don't get a refill, you're losing money. Nothing is free.
 
Hatuey said:
I was just taking aim at the comparison between the government and a business. If people wanted to run the government as efficiently as businesses are run, we would have defaulted on our debt a long time ago or entered bankruptcy or any number of things which happen to over 50% of businesses within the first year. The freemarket is not the place to look at for guidelines on efficient expenditures.
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Would a search for inefficient expenditures be more appropriate for a government?

vasuderatorrent
 
aberrant85 said:
If Congress is tasked with funding the government, should it also be constitutionally responsible if they fail to do so?
Click to expand...

There should be a law passed preventing a shutdown over budget fights. But I don't think it should be a Constitutional Amendment.
 
I can just see it now...

"Our country is broke and can't pay its bills."

"You CAN'T shut down...it's against the LAW!!"
 
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