So, it appears that the government is going to shut down tomorrow. Apparently, the powers that be have decided they can’t come to an agreement on how to fund the government for the rest of the year.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that not everyone involved with this situation has thought it through. In the end, life must go on and this country must move forward. However, the pending process seems a bit counter-intuitive as eventually someone will have to back down and compromise. Obviously, we’d save a whole lot of time and money if they just did it now instead of two weeks from now.

As I’m sure we all know–in a democratic country like the United States, the Congress is comprised of delegates elected by the people. Though, as I learned when I was quite young, “what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.” What this essentially implies is that in a system led by popular vote, cooler heads will not necessarily prevail. Regardless of how you feel about this, our system has managed to work for the past two hundred years–and I’d rather live in a country where I have a say. That aside, however, our forefathers decided to design a system where deadlocks can occur. Although they obviously wouldn’t be the greatest software programmers if they were alive today (multi-threaded concurrency joke! Okay, maybe not so much), they had a vision and set up a framework that could be modified over time.

Unfortunately, we haven’t solved this issue yet. And here we are.

When you get right down to it, the whole situation seems to be rather childish at first. Of course, considering that Congress is an institution representing the thin line that keeps us from blowing each other away, it seems a little more adult-like when put into perspective. At the end of the day, Congress has the power of the wallet as determined by our constitution. The problem arises there, and it must be solved there.

What’s happening right now is not what I’d call a real attempt to solve the problem. The money issues facing this nation won’t be solved with a few billion here or a few billion there. It’s deeper than the 33 billion currently being debated, or even the 100 billion that the Tea Party demands. What I see happening right now is show politics in an attempt to appease fiscal conservatives and the Tea Party. The republican party has done this before by passing the healthcare (Obamacare if you will) repeal in the House and declaring their promise kept.

What’s worse is that the negotiators are also using this budget crisis as an opportunity to advance a set of ideological differences. The Tea Party, being for small government, would seem to welcome a government shutdown and see it as a victory on their part. Conservatives want to repeal healthcare legislation, get rid of medicare (to be replaced with private vouchers) and defund abortions. Liberals, on the other hand, seem to have a hard time eliminating programs which would hugely inconvenience the middle or lower classes. It’s almost as if traditional or neoconservatives like John Boehner could play the middle and use this situation to act like mediators. I get the impression that he could almost seem presidential if he manages to hold off the Tea Party and come up with a solution acceptable to the left.

Perhaps these government shutdowns can be more readily understood by comparing them to newly formed river deltas. In the muck at the bottom, there’s a lot of loose rocks, soil, and water. Unfortunately, it’s very murky. Eventually, the rocks and soil will separate from the water and set, revealing previously unseen topography. It may take some time, but that delay can be important. Those who desire a solution will see the compromises as the soil sets.