Show HN: govuptime.com

Exaggeration seems to be a common theme for one of the authors: https://twitter.com/JustineTunney/status/385843326085132289

Ah, yes, Hacker News--where duly-elected representatives performing their duly-allowed-by-the-Constitution duties to fund or not fund the government "should not be allowed to do this."

Big news, folks: the House is allowed to not allow any additional spending. It's their right to do this under the Constitution. No votes to allow spending? No spending. It's really that simple. Don't let normalcy bias (we've always increased the debt ceiling!) cloud your judgment.

Oh, and should not be allowed by whom? They are allowed under the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. Are some suggesting that there is a more supreme law/being/entity that can disallow that which is Constitutionally approved from happening?

> BTW, just because you're "not a Republican", it certainly > doesn't mean that you're non-partisan. Either way, you seem > awfully defensive for a non-Republican.

Mostly, I'm just sick of seeing both sides make the same talking points over and over again to see which one's soundbites happen to stick better. As much as you discredit Boehner for disallowing an up or down vote, Reid is doing the exactly the same thing with the memorial funding, FEMA funding, etc., etc., but the pot still calls the kettle black, and only because they're ahead in the polls.

If they weren't polling ahead, they'd have already begun the process of concession and started actually funding the government, or at least the vast majority of it, and could take the Obamacare fight separately, which is one that the House is sure to lose anyway.

Most of the people that I've seen getting upset at the Republicans about this are upset because they're proponents of Obamacare, and most of the people I've seen getting upset at the Democrats are just doing so on party lines. The House is almost perfectly divided on party lines over this, but have seen minor bi-partisan support on the individual funding bills, which the Senate refuses to entertain, only because they're winning the popularity contest.

Regardless, onlookers have generally claimed their stake in the war based on the politics they already had, with both sides buying into the bullshit talking points that their elected representatives have manufactured.

Yes, Boehner could probably end this with a single up / down vote on a "clean" CR, but he's certainly not obligated to.

Yes, Reid could probably end this with a few procedural votes, but he's also not obligated to.

Obama could also end this by offering a little bit of non-confrontational advice to either side, but he's not obligated to.

Of those, I really only criticize the Executive Branch, because I do feel that a large portion of his job is to be one of unification, for which he has failed at in his second term, and having witnessed his negotiation style with Boehner post-election, it was not one of concession.

The idea that the Senate should get a "clean" CR just because they want it is equally as farcical as the idea that the House should get a concession bill passed in which Obamacare is delayed.

The middle ground happens to be the area in which I think the House somewhat inadvertently stumbled into, which is the piecemeal legislation, but looking through history, that is the regular order on how these things tend to be organized where both wings are far apart on the '100%' solution... and the Senate refuses to entertain that.

If I seem nonplussed by the affair, it's not because of any kinship with the Republicans, but because I'd personally like to see our government be less efficient, as I suspect very heavily that is what our founders would prefer. A slow moving government is in the best interests of liberty, and I'd much rather see bills take far longer to hash out than to have trillions of dollars in spending or taxes approved with an uncontested procedural vote.

Edit: And I had to add this, but thinking I'm a member of the opposition party because I'm not in 100% agreement with your party does nothing but affirm my pessimism about thoughtful politics in the US. Not that you should care, per se, but there are people out there who try to reason their way into the intelligent side of any issue, without bothering to check and see which way they're "supposed" to feel based on party lines. That isn't an accusation to you, or anybody here, so much as a signal that both sides are wrong about as much as they're right, and we shouldn't feel "loyalty" to politicians that we like enough that we should support them when they're wrong, and vice versa.

There are currently laws that require the executive branch to submit a budget every year (the Budget Control Act of 1921), which the president violated for a few years consecutively, forcing the past few years' continuing resolutions (and in part, the sequester).

There are additional Budget Acts (passed in the mid-70s, 90s, etc.) that require those budgets to be acted upon by Congress or reconsidered, which have all been routinely violated for the past few years as well.

The issue with these bills is that they are only enforced by those with the power to break them, which means that they are de facto never enforced.

It just doesn't work. Similar visual comparisons between agencies mean vastly different things depending on their position on the graph. This is an example of a dataset that would have been better served by a simple list of numbers and percentages.