The government shutdowns are more than an inconvenience. The shutdowns effect the USA economy which extends into international economies and in turn to the reliability of the USA at all as a financial partner. The current shutdowns place the USA in the column of "banana republics," except with the financial sector that enjoys the lapse of time the government can audit their wrongdoing. What good are laws if they are a joke in the final analysis? The markets don't shutdown because the USA government can't conduct the people's business.
When the financial sector wins against the governance of a country, it impacts the reliability of doing business. The Plutocrats believe they can provide the only governance needed in any country; in the USA Trump's Plutocratic regime is proving Wall Street can't govern.
The Democrats have a very difficult role in these shutdowns in the USA because they are charged with the priority of protecting the people of the USA. I think pointing to the fact the Republicans have a majority in both the Senate and House and the Executive Branch is their best defense. The Democrats will not participate in passing laws that will harm the people of the USA. "The Dreamers" are important to the USA and it's best future. There is no reason for the Democrats to surrender to Republican politics when it harms real people living their lives as best they can. The Democrats have to place the people of the USA first in their own priorities.
The Republicans are not living in the real world, that was validated by "The Memo." The Republican hubris is taking over the party as it's governance and it is very dangerous. It is the obligation of the Democrats to end the hubris of the Repubicans and govern. The USA is not about happy Plutocrats skimming their financial cushion from the USA Treasury, it is and always has been about responsible governance of the majority of people. That governance includes the innocent that find themselves confused about the intentions of the only country they know as their own.
January 22, 2018
By Jacob Frenkel
...Yet other extremely important (click here) but not defined in the “performing emergency work” category functions either slow or get shelved during a federal shutdown.
In the financial services industries, that includes banks and brokerage firms, there are ongoing audit functions entirely unrelated to enforcement programs. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent bureau within Treasury, as well as the Federal Reserve, for example, will have auditors or examiners conducting regularly scheduled audits and examinations of the banking institutions they supervise. Similarly, the SEC’s Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations conducts inspections and examinations at broker-dealers, mutual funds, hedge funds and investment advisors. One collateral yet immediate downstream effect is active audits, inspections and examinations last week – whether at the beginning, middle or end – may have come to a screeching halt, absent an emergency scenario associated with the work. Active conference rooms this past Thursday and Friday may be or soon be dark, with auditors, inspectors and examiners absent, possibly for weeks....
Child deaths have increased during this Flu Season. This is not the time to shut down the CDC or FDA. The shutdowns are costing lives.
... And a Washington Post story explained that the effect of a federal shutdown on the Department of Health and Human Services includes the Centers for Disease Control suspending its flu-tracking program and the National Institutes of Health not admitting new patients to clinical trials relating to life-threatening illnesses. Similarly, the Food and Drug Administration will stop routine inspections and laboratory research.
