Minnesota is shutting down non-essential services as of today. Not sure how this will effect me, but I'm not worried. I know that this will create a hardship for some and I don't mean to minimize that hardship. My expectation is that this will be a short shutdown. Be very surprised if it lasts even a week. The pressure to get something done is going to be quite intense from the media with their fluff story focus on those hardships. The absense of hard news about what the actual fighting is over will also help pols come to a solution.
The most irritating part is the public reaction in the letters sections and yesterday at my work. The letters have concentrated on calling both sides (or the other side) childish. Or hinting that they're drawing this out for the per diem. The per diem! As if a couple of bucks a day would be worth the political fallout of a shutdown.
The buzz at work yesterday was that if we'd cut the Govenor's pay (and some of the legislators) we could bridge the gap and be done. Yep, throw a couple of hundred thousand on the pile and the budget evens out. And these are adult people!
Here's the deal. We have a very evenly divided legislature here in Minnesota. We also have an ideologically divided set of parties. Both parties are afraid that their voters will crucify them if they cave in. And voila, a budget impasse. Seriously, who doesn't understand this?
No comments:
Post a Comment