CONGRESS IS SHUTTING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT

Conservative Republicans in our nation's capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They've basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.
It's as if an entire branch of the federal government—the branch that's supposed to deal directly with the nation's problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law—has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called "sequester" that's cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation's poor, and national defense.


http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/conservatives-immobilize-congress?akid=10559.294211.mA9Zk0&rd=1&src=newsletter853683&t=15