At 12 a.m. Tuesday the United States government functionally shut down, and the blame has not stopped being thrown back and forth.
Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) blames Boehner and the Tea Party for the shutdown.
“Speaker Boehner and his band of Tea Party radicals have done the unthinkable. They have shut down the federal government,” Reid said.
On the other side is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) complaining that the Democrats will not work out the differences.
“Now [the Democrats] said they won’t even sit down to work out differences,” McConnell said.
You know there is true gridlock when McConnell gets mad at another party because they are the ones who will not compromise.
The sad thing about it is that they are both wrong. It is not a certain party or person who is at fault here.
The reason we are in shutdown is due to the electoral system in our country, mainly the flawed case of Citizens United: it has built a shell around our congressmen that has forbidden them from exiting.
Citizens United was the case that allowed corporations to fund political elections. This essentially has allowed corporations to puppet a senator to vote for things in their interest, for fear that they will not get the backing come next election.
This has forced Republicans to push Obamacare off of the docket to clear money, and Democrats to stick to their guns.
It is amazing that this is not a bigger issue in politics. Normally, the United States balks over any form of corruption, especially in this day and age. Look at what happened with the NSA or Benghazi.
However, other than the Occupy movement, which is never talked about anymore, there has really never been any movement to stop Citizens United. There has hardly been any recent news coverage about it.
To be honest, despite what you might think, the NSA and Benghazi are not going to directly impact your life. Citizens United, however, is not only affecting your voice, but now with the government shutdown, it threatens your economy and, even more importantly, your job security.
Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic Lost, claims that this is not a party issue.
“It’s bipartisan, equal-opportunity corruption. It blocks the left on a whole range of issues that we on the left really care about,” Lessig said. “It blocks the right too, as it makes principled arguments of the right increasingly impossible.”
This issue surpasses much more than whether we should cut Obamacare, or whether or not we should increase taxes to pay off the bills our government owes. It is a fundamental purpose of our voice in politics
It is solvable as well.
This issue is solvable by shutting down Citizens United. Two bills to do so are already on the docket: Fair Elections Now Act, and the American Anti-Corruption Act. If we can pass these and end Citizens United, we can take our voice back and end the gridlock.
Do not let anyone tell you this is impossible. Politics did not create the idea of public initiatives for nothing. This is America; use your voice and your vote to gain back the voice and vote that has been taken away from you.
For, if you do not, we will be stuck in a world where autonomy is gone; where corporations, and not people, dictate who votes for what.
