The us government balancing on the verge of a shutdown

The rift between Democrats and Republicans in the highest echelons of the US power system has become so deep that the government, for the first time in 15 years, is balancing on the verge of a shutdown.

The issue the two parties cannot agree upon is the proposed budget cuts with both parties trying to avoid too many spending restrictions for their potential electoral base.

But the whole story definitely goes far beyond a technical issue of whether to pay the military a hundred dollars more at the expense of teachers or vice versa. The budget battle of spring 2011 is the first (and most probably not last) clash between the Democrat White House and the newly-elected Republican majority on Capitol Hill (at least, in the House of Representatives, although the drift in the Senate shouldn’t be too long in the making).

The Republicans in the House (and it should be noted that the majority of the 87 freshmen – and freshwomen – mostly represent the hard-liners leaning towards the so called Tea Party) are eager to take an opportunity to demonstrate that the landslide victory achieved by Barack Obama in 2008 was no more than a temporary swing to the left – due exclusively to the tiredness an average American experienced after eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Source: Voice of Russia