Impending Shutdown of DHS

[Tama]

They provided people with jobs...that's about it.

[AccountingDrone]

I would be thrilled if we could get rid of TSA and Homeland Security - I can not see where they have done anything beneficial in the past decade.

[MadMike]

I'm not so sure that Homeland Insecurity shutting down would be such a bad thing.

[Greenday]

You have it the wrong way around. Its a poison pill. The Republicans inserted a measure to defund Obama's immigration reform into the funding bill for DHS. They're trying to piggyback it on the funding bill and the Dems are refusing and demanding a clean version of the bill.

Its the same sort of immature tantrum bullshit that lead to the debt ceiling showdown.

Figures. I can't stand this crap of politicians trying to add on additional stuff that has nothing to do with the main focus of the bill.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

As a person who has worked a government job before, honestly if you're expecting the voting public to care it's just not going to happen. Bar none, the worst benefits and options I've EVER had at a job was a government job and that doesn't even get into the possibility of a union strike or some politician that didn't want to tax so just axed people instead.

Essentially, government is a political discussion and as a result it is OK for you to lose your job because a different party won. That's sort of accepted in bureaucracy. So to your point, I think what you neglect is that it DOES help people. This behavior allows to political parties to score voter points on a target demographic a majority of Americans think are lazy, entitled, and have better benefits than they do. It's beneficial because it's accepted that a budget shortfall can be borne on the backs of those workers temporarily. And because those workers have no legal recourse to sue legislators directly or the organization (congress), what you have is a unique group in American society that can be abused by their employer with impunity so long as any collective bargaining is honored.

Cooincidentily, this is why collective bargaining exists in government. Those unions formed because the behavior is recurrent and backed by voters which can make taking a Government job extremely costly in terms of stress and finance.

[Gravekeeper]

For those who don't know (Which seems to be most people not affected by it), the budget for the Department of Homeland Security is running out and it's time for it to be renewed. There's one catch: currently, the DHS funding bill includes funding for helping illegal immigrants. As the Republicans state, why the hell does a DHS funding bill have ANYTHING to do with helping illegal immigrants out? They want to amend it so it strictly sticks to DHS and nothing else. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

You have it the wrong way around. Its a poison pill. The Republicans inserted a measure to defund Obama's immigration reform into the funding bill for DHS. They're trying to piggyback it on the funding bill and the Dems are refusing and demanding a clean version of the bill.

Its the same sort of immature tantrum bullshit that lead to the debt ceiling showdown.

[Greenday]

For those who don't know (Which seems to be most people not affected by it), the budget for the Department of Homeland Security is running out and it's time for it to be renewed. There's one catch: currently, the DHS funding bill includes funding for helping illegal immigrants. As the Republicans state, why the hell does a DHS funding bill have ANYTHING to do with helping illegal immigrants out? They want to amend it so it strictly sticks to DHS and nothing else. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

So currently they are duking it out over the funding for illegal immigrants. Major players in Congress and the Senate are claiming it's not a big deal if DHS has to shutdown as most people are considered essential (Then why the hell shut it down) and it's just going to hurt administrative types. What they DON'T mention is that besides the tons of non-administrative types who will be furloughed, thousands and thousands of contractors will get screwed over as a result.

Once again, we are getting screwed over the dick measuring contest that is our insane two party system that does nothing to benefit the people.