How people were inconvenienced and how many billions of dollars in revenues and income were lost as a result of the government shutdown are newsworthy, but generally unmentioned in the news are the deals done to grease the wheels.
That obfuscates letting the public know how government works, or doesn’t. Rueters (http://tinyurl.com/kzso86s) kindly listed a few, namely: $9.248 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration to prevent budget cuts from disrupting the work; $2.455 billion for the Veterans Administration to deal with a huge claims backlog; an additional $1.2 billion for a $755 million, more than 20-year-old dam project in Illinois and Kentucky for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who helped reach the deal; $600 million for fire management and suppression for California and other states; $450 million for flood relief for Colorado; and $174,000 for payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, the widow of New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who died in June.
When a co-worker dies, collecting a few dollars for some flowers is traditional, as is adding “anomalies” for special needs to facilitate legislation.
The lubrication expense for obtaining a budget and temporary credit deal totaled $13,953,174,000.
Merv Murphy
Vancouver
