C L O S E D !

As of midnight last night, the United States of America is officially closed.   The children running the Republican Party stamped their collective feet and refused to fund the government unless the President and his party defunded the Affordable Care Act. 

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) put his cowardice on open display and refused to put a clean spending bill to a full vote of the House, choosing instead to meekly allow the radicals in his party to hijack the country. Representative Peter King (R-NY) tried to rally enough moderate Republican votes to force the Speaker to call for a full vote under some obscure procedure called "the rule";  but he couldn't find 17 Republicans to join him.  

In a statement late last night Mr. King said:   "We have people in the conference, I believe, who'd be just as happy to have the government shut down.  They live in these narrow echo chambers.  They listen to themselves and their Tea Party friends.  That keeps them going, forgetting that the rest of the country thinks we are crazy."

Some Republican members of the House indicated that they would vote for a clean bill if the Speaker presented it, but would not stick their necks out to force a vote for fear of a Tea Party backlash come election time. 

At 12:01, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent a message to the Senate asking them to negotiate.

what eye thynk:   NOW they want to negotiate?  Where were they six months ago when the Senate sent their budget to the House and requested the creation of a conference committee to work out a compromise budget between the two chambers?  Oh, yeah, that was when the House sent a return message saying that they had no intention of  negotiating unless the ACA was defunded or repealed.  (Maybe "negotiate" has a different meaning in their dictionary?)

Forget that the law was debated and  passed by both chambers of Congress. Forget that the President signed it into law.  Forget that we had an election and the citizens of this country showed their support of the ACA by rejecting the candidate who promised to put an end to it.  Forget that the Supreme Court upheld the law.  

The Tea Party is all about defending democracy and the will of the people--until the people vote their opposition--then democracy is just a word and the people are just an inconvenience.