Shutdown the shutdowns now

Any lawmakers in Washington, D.C. who are celebrating the end of the shutdown should be ashamed of themselves. There is nothing to celebrate after causing economic hardship to people when the only thing they did wrong was voting you into office.

Government workers and those that need government benefits are getting their pay and benefits back, but then they have to gird themselves for the inevitability of another shutdown when their congressmen decide not to do their jobs once again.

The process needs to change now.

The next time your U.S. senator or representative comes up for reelection, or a new candidate is running against them, they need to be asked what they are going to do to keep the government from shutting down again? If they don’t have an acceptable answer to that question then they should not get your vote.

In the meantime, President Trump and lawmakers need to talk to the people who they have harmed by the shutdown to understand just how debilitating it is to so many people.

I personally know one person who had to work for no pay during the shutdown. She just bought her first home this year and her truck broke down during the shutdown, costing her thousands of dollars. I’m sure this person’s story is similar to many, many others.

Fortunately this person doesn’t have any children. I’d like to say that I can’t imagine how it feels to rely on the government to feed your family, but I do. When I was in college, as a single parent raising two children, I had to rely on food stamps, which is the same as the current Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP to feed my children. Not being able to feed your family is devastating.

I know there is a lot of waste and abuse in the system. But there are also good people who use these programs. Many of them, through no fault of their own, have found themselves dependent on the welfare system and would love nothing better than to find a way up and out.

And as far as Obamacare is concerned, the federal government needs to figure out a way to make healthcare more affordable, which is what they should have been doing since the costs of healthcare started increasing to levels that are unsustainable for their constituents. This isn’t a problem that just cropped up, it’s been an issue for many years. Maybe lawmakers need to be insured by the same institutions that their constituents have to use. That might be the only way for them to understand the gravity of the healthcare debacle.

And, for those of you who think you weren’t directly impacted by the shutdown, think again. The shutdown has impacted the economy and all of us will continue to pay for that.