U.S. Government shuts down.

[Jester]

They also knew very well that the federal deficit was spiraling out of control, that there is not enough tax revenue to pay the ballooning cost of entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, et cetera), and certainly there isn’t enough revenue to pay for all the boondoggles and giveaways the Democrats voted for in the name of “stimulus.” Adding to this, there is not enough revenue to pay the cost of Obamacare, which Democrats rammed through Congress in March 2010 on a party-line vote. Passing an actual budget would have made clear the unsustainable fiscal nightmare into which Democrat policies have plunged the nation during the Obama Age, and so Harry Reid simply didn’t pass a budget for three years.

The Republican's, in order to get on board to endorse yet another continuing resolution to keep paying as we go (rather than do the right thing a create a budget), set the bar at rolling back some spending, namely they began with the one thing that seems very unpopular, that is Obamacare. Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

It's almost as if... they have a completely different view of what's happening than Republicans! How could that be?

They believe that stimulus during downturns is low-cost and high-value. That consumption smoothing is a real thing, and that you don't have to balance the budget every year. That the US is nowhere near a debt crisis, since borrowing costs are low, and bond financing is cheap. That Obamacare is better than what it replaces, and in the long run, cheaper. That it's actually not unpopular, and that the polls are lumping together both rightist critics who think it goes too far, and leftist critics who think it doesn't go far enough. That about 3/4 of Americans oppose both defunding and repealing, let alone shutting the government down in a hissy fit.

Yeah, I know. It's crazy. It's like they haven't been getting the memos at all.

Budgets, by the by, are window dressing. Congress approves spending and taxation. That happens, whether they put it down on paper or not. It's a fair cop that it was cowardly to not pass a budget back when they ran the show. But it doesn't actually affect the fiscal situation, though I agree it looks bad. The problem now, however, is that they can't agree on what spending and taxation should be, which is a much larger problem than passing a document saying what it is.

-Jester