The Republican Government Shutdown is hurting people by cutting their jobs and income.  Many will not be compensated because they are not Federal employees. Most Republicans in Congress don’t seem  to understand or care.  What was originally an attempt to go backward on healthcare by not funding the Affordable Care Act has now become an ideological attempt to reduce government spending and the deficit.

Unfortunately Tea Party Republicans are so blinded by their libertarian ideology that they are ignoring the disastrous impact they are having on many people’s lives, jobs, income and businesses. These people including children are the innocent victims of anti-government libertarian ideologues whose tactics are literally bordering on anarchy.

While government workers who are furloughed by the Tea Party Republicans are not being paid now, Congress voted to pay them later. But their getting pay is like a free gift; the government and the public is not getting the benefit of their labor or keeping money flowing in the local economies impacted.

Here are just a few of the impacts now being revealed.

As the Huffington Post notes:

“…for thousands of furloughed workers who aren’t federal employees, no paycheck is coming.

The shutdown of national parks has sent home as many as 15,000 private-sector workers, including federal contractors and non-federal employees who work on national parkland, according to American Recreation Coalition, a park advocacy nonprofit.

The New York Times in an article entitled Ripples from the Shutdown Left without Government Services, Small Business Feel the Pinch, they report that:

The Small Business Administration says it backs an average of $96 million in small-business lending each day. Having that financing stream frozen sets off a chain reaction of economic pain, said Anthony R. Wilkinson, who heads the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, a trade group. “There are restaurants that aren’t being opened and contracts that aren’t being fulfilled,” he said. “As this drags on into Week 2, people are getting pretty worried.”

The toll may not be conspicuous yet in the broader economy, but at the local level, the ripples are spreading. At many banks, direct small business lending is stalled too, because much of the Internal Revenue Service is closed, preventing lenders from checking tax information provided by applicants. Business owners are also grappling with the absence of other crucial government services, like E-Verify, the online system companies use to confirm the eligibility of prospective employees to work in the United States.”

The article has a number of cases of businesses and people where the impact is being felt and the anxiety is increasing. Tea Party Republicans are hurting people and the economy and it needs to end. And it makes no sense to temporarily fund the government for a few weeks more and then start all over again adding to the current mess by repeating this over and over. Commentary in the Times article says it best.

Mr. Leh said he was monitoring the debt-ceiling fight in despair. “The thing that’s literally scaring me to death is this reckless behavior,” he said. “They’re going to drive the interest rates up. I’m on a 6 percent variable loan — if it goes up two points, that’s a huge impact for a business my size. And there’s nothing you can do. You just watch the madness continue.”

Ms. Ozer said she heard dozens of times each day from business owners with similar concerns, and it infuriated her.

“Just as small entrepreneurs are willing to take some risks again, the government goes and begins to behave like irresponsible children,” she said. “They make decisions that adversely affect the economy, when it’s so fragile to begin with.

“The real tea party threw tea into the Boston harbor. These people are throwing businesses and people’s salaries.”

I think these last comments sum it up well. “behaving like irresponsible children”. If you’ve ever watched a child throwing a tantrum and rolling around on the floor yelling to get what they want, this is what the Tea Party Republicans are doing. It’s all about what they want, not about what’s good for the people they’re supposed to represent or what’s good for the economy or the country. They are so blinded by their right wing ideology and selfishness that they are not seeing how they are hurting others in this country.

These Tea Party Republicans were backed by millions of dollars in contributions  from the Koch Brothers and other special and corporate interests. They are not people that should have been elected in the first place but woe be to those that re-elect them because you can now plainly see where their priorities are. They are not about helping working families, children, the elderly and others who live paycheck to paycheck and need help from the government to survive.

While the Tea Party Republicans so hate helping struggling citizens hurt by their tantrums, they seem to have no problem continuing to give corporations huge tax breaks which is really corporate welfare. Nor do they seem concerned that more and more of the countries wealth is being concentrated in the top 1% and they continue to push for more tax cuts for the wealthy. .Please do not re-elect these free market pro tax loophole advocates to office again. Judge them by their actions and work to get them voted out of office.