So how long will Obama and Reid keep the government shut down?

As long as they can continue to fool people into thinking this is a party issue rather than the branch issue that it truly is!

Congrats on seeing through their BS! May God help us all as they continue to try to usurp the Constitution and force a dictatorship in refusing to work with the House -- the first branch of government set up! Think it through...the House represents Americans, yet the President has refused to take a single meeting or negotiate with the House even once since taking office, yet he meets with the enemies of America but won't meet with America? His conduct is shady at best and impeachable at worst, and he lies to the American public to suggest this is a party issue and that somehow the Republicans have failed...the truth is that Washington has failed because the Administrative branch has colluded with the Senate to shut out the House, which is the representatives of the American people!!

I agree government is too large. Most of it is duplicated efforts and should be dismantled. I think it is disgraceful that shutting down services begins at the bottom rather than at the top too - disgusting.

Your premise is false.

The proximate cause of shutdown is that the house and senate failed to pass the same bill.

However, the republicans spent years hounding the president for a "budget bill." Obama gave them a budget bill, and now they refuse to conference on it -- a total of 18 refusals to conference this year.

Here's what usually happens when house & senate pass different versions of a funding bill -- committee representatives from both parties from house & senate get together in a conference. The conference makes a compromise bill. Both chambers vote up or down on the compromise bill. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN. Why not?

In the current impasse, house republican leadership knows that enough moderate republicans would vote in the conference for a clean bill like the senate passed, and the clean bill would pass both houses in an up or down vote. House republican leadership blocked a conference 18 times because they don't want the outcome of the conference.

In this case, it's the refusal to conference that is causing the shutdown. And polls show the American people see that. Check out: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/p... where congressional democrats have a 32% positive rating vs congressional republicans' 17%. Also see http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/17/1657... where (pos - neg): republicans = -23 points; democrats +6 points. That's a stark difference.

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Yes, the ball actually has always been in their court because people hate that Tea Party and don't trust them, nor their horrible grammar.

If it stays shut down will it end all wars ?