The Washington Post had a good article on “the shutdown” of the US government last week– i.e. the Republican’s current refusal to pass debt increase or budget bills without a “negotiation” of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) or other pending financial issues.  The article by Dylan Matthews discusses what I have been pondering as of late.  Namely, how is it that a house member, from a single district in Ohio, one of 435 members of the House of Representatives, can go toe-to-toe with a nationally elected and constitutionally selected representative of one of the three branches of our government (i.e. The President), and shut down the entire US Government?  It seems preposterous and exposes a flaw in our system.  To be sure, setting up a government that both respects the wishes of the majority, and prevents the steam-rolling of legitimate but minority-held positions, would be extremely challenging.  They got it right, for the most part.  But did the forefathers blow it on this point?  Did they assume nobody who loves this Country and is a member of Congress would act so anti-American?  Frankly, I fear for the future of our republic.

It simply will not work; allowing a single person, who is not elected nationally, but who happens to be the speaker of the House, to be able to personally decide which bills are brought to the floor for a vote.  It is said by the media that if an up or down vote on a finanical resolution with no string attached were allowed, the shut down would end immediately.  Instead, the Speaker refuses to act, and holds previously passed laws “hostage” even after the Supreme Court has deemed them lawful and constitutional.  The severity of this shutdown will be immense, and it shows that the economy and vitality of this Country come second to party politics.  Sad.

As Mr. Matthews notes in his article:

“It is important to be very clear about what’s scary here. It’s not any one instance of disagreement or brinksmanship. It’s the emergence of the sustained, structural problems that have harmed other countries with similar presidential systems. To believe that the U.S. won’t eventually face terrible consequences from the mixture of polarized parties in a presidential system is to believe that the clear trends in our political system will, for reasons that are currently unclear, reverse themselves. That would be nice, but as they say, hope is not a plan. And the problems of our politics have something of a built-in defense mechanism against meddlesome voters trying to impose sanity on the system.”