The tea party and fiscal responsibility

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas had the observation of the month, if not the year.

“Of all the bizarre moments,” he said, “this may be the most bizarre — that  we will pay people not to work.”

Doggett, a Democrat, called it “the new tea party sense of fiscal responsibility.”

Have we lost sight of some of the real issues here — the main one being that Congress spends too much money?

When the automakers furlough workers they  force workers to use their vacation time.

Republicans used to say there was no such thing as a free lunch. Now they look less intelligent with each passing day of the government shutdown. There is  an array of government economies they could be suggesting. Instead, they are endangering the sequester they forced  Democrats to agree to earlier in the year.

The sequester imposed up to 10 percent reductions in government spending, the only economies the Congress has agreed to in recent memory. It is set to save the country billions of dollars in the coming years.

 Now that was a real achievement.

Why can’t we just agree to fund government at the level called for by the sequester?

 Remember, we do have a national debt totaling over $16.7 trillion.