Mark Pryor made some comments on April 6, 2011 on the floor of the U.S.Senate concerning the possible federal government shutdown. I will provide all of his comments in my next few posts. Here is a portion below:
Mr. President. We find ourselves in dangerous territory while Republicans and Democrats continue to point fingers and hold fiery press conferences, a government shutdown is quickly approaching. The blame game is like quicksand. It has the ability to drag down not just the Senate and the House, but our entire economy and even our country. No matter how you look at it, a shutdown would be reckless and irresponsible.
We can get this short-term budget problem resolved if all parties would turn off the rhetoric and stop the campaigning. A few extreme partisans stand in the way of progress, blocking a good-faith effort of many others seeking common ground. I ask them to take to heart what it says in the Book of Isaiah, “Come now, let us reason together.” We need to overcome this budget impasse and live up to the oath we took to the people we represent.
Larger challenges await our attention. It is not in our best interest to see a government shutdown, and I don’t think it is in the best interest of the nation to continue on this deficit spending cycle that we’ve been on. We owe it to the American people and the world watching us to show American leadership on both our short-term and long-term fiscal challenges.
I’d like to see us turn our efforts to the blueprint provided by the debt commission. We must find ways to reduce spending, address entitlement programs, and reform the tax code. And now with all the momentum built up over the last few months, it is the time to lead. We must make the serious decision to get our nation out of the red so that we can be competitive for the future. Again, I’d say let’s turn off the rhetoric and be part of the solution, not the problem.
Senator Pryor does not want us to continue this deficit spending but what does a CR do? It continues the current spending levels!!!!
Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute wrote a great article called, “Winning the Government-Shutdown Fight,” National Review Online, Feb 25, 2011. Let me share with you some history about the federal government shutdown in 1995. These events also lead me to disagree with Senator Pryor”s assertion that bad things will happen if the federal shutdown occurs. Good things happened last time. Here is what Mitchell wrote:
With the GOP-led House and the Democratic Senate and White House far apart on a measure to pay the federal government’s bills past March 4, Washington is rumbling toward a repeat of the 1995 government-shutdown fight (actually two shutdown fights, one in mid-November of that year and the other in mid-December).
This makes some Republicans nervous. They think Bill Clinton “won” the blame game that year, and they’re afraid they will get the short end of the stick if there is a 1995-type impasse this year.
A timid approach, though, is a recipe for failure. It means that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can sit on their hands, make zero concessions, and wait for the GOP to surrender any time a deadline approaches.
To put it simply, Republicans need to hold firm and fight hard.
In other words, budget hawks in the House have no choice. They have to fight.
But they can take comfort in the fact that this is not a suicide mission. The conventional wisdom about what happened in November of 1995 is very misleading.
Republicans certainly did not suffer at the polls. They lost only nine House seats, a relatively trivial number after a net gain of 54 in 1994. They actually added to their majority in the Senate, picking up two seats in the 1996 cycle.
More important, they succeeded in dramatically reducing the growth of federal spending. They did not get everything they wanted, to be sure, but government spending grew by just 2.9 percent during the first four years of GOP control, helping to turn a $164 billion deficit in 1995 into a $126 billion surplus in 1999. And they enacted a big tax cut in 1997.
If that’s what happens when Republicans are defeated, I hope the GOP loses again this year.
Dan Mitchell of Cato Institute
__________________________________
I am doing a series on famous Arkansans and today we have a special treat.
Sonny Boy Williams, III
Inducted in 2008
(1908-1965) – Born Aleck Ford in Glendora, Mississippi, Sonny Boy Williams was a masterful songwriter and performer. He was one of the most influential blues performers of his generation and, along with Robert Lockwood, was one of the first electric blues acts in the Delta. In the late 1920s he began performing at jukes and parties, traveling throughout Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee working as a one man band with harmonicas, drums and the zoo thorn at dance halls, lumber camps, carnivals and ballparks. In the mid 1930s he was being called “Little Boy Blue” and worked at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. In late 1941, he adopted the “Sonny Boy Williams” name and along with Robert Jr. Lockwood began performing on KFFA in Helena and the “King Biscuit Time” radio program where he performed daily until his death. Some of his songs, “Don’t Start Me Talking,” “The Key,” “Nine Below Zero,” “Help Me” and many more can be found in any serious blues harmonica player’s repertoire today.
The Daily Hatch 