The Next Federal Government Budget Crisis Hits September 30th, 2011

08-12-2011 • ZeroHedge.com

For more than 850 days the US has gone without a budget. The House passed one not long ago; the Senate tabled it. The Administration has not offered up one either. The absence of an approved budget means that the only way the country can continue to operate is through a series of temporary extensions. The last time we went through a vote on a continuing resolution was just four months ago. That fight went down to the wire. At the time it was 50-50 that the government would be forced to shut down. In the end a deal was reached to extend things to the end of this fiscal year. That happens to be just six weeks from today. The fight back in April was the opening salvo of the war between Democrats and Republicans. I think this was the first definitive evidence that our government was so deeply divided that it had become dysfunctional. It was the debt ceiling catastrophe that drove S&P to cut the US credit rating. The seeds for that ratings cut came from the Continuing Resolution debacle. To get a new Resolution through the house the Democrats and the WH will have to make concessions. We’ve seen where this takes us. Crisis.