After spending countless hours on homework, I sometimes find myself checking up on the news of the world around me. Most of the popular junk that we call news is just a needless waste of time, but occasionally I find  a topic or two that catches my eye. This week, that topic was the government shutdown.

Why does our federal government have the ability to shut down in the first place? I understand that this particular shutdown (and the threat of a shutdown back in 2011) occurred because Congress failed to agree on a proper budget. The government needs a proper budget so the programs everyone in this nation relies on can  afford to manage themselves, pay employees, and provide benefits.

If Congress can’t agree on a budget, there isn’t any money to fuel these programs and departments, and everything  stops. That much I understand.

However, what I don’t understand is how politicians, who are paid ridiculous amounts of money to figure this stuff out, can simply shutdown the government for a short period of time, and still be paid for it.

I personally support the Republican side of the debate as I do with most issues, but I must say that this is quite shameful. For both parties to be pig-headed enough to shut the government down shows how awful our two-party system is.

Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of being a politician if you can’t even understand the fundamental idea of a ‘compromise’ or ‘bipartisan plan’ that almost all politicians speak of daily?

Back to the issue at hand. Here’s what I would do instead of having a government shutdown: instead of the Republican Party standing firmly against the Democratic Party to repeal Obamacare, I would come up with a clever way to chip away at it slowly.

Defunding it completely is a brilliant idea since the donkeys of the Democratic Party refuse to let this dream of theirs go (feel free to argue against me on this all you want, but that is where I stand, and where I will keep standing until this foolish socialist policy is exposed for the joke that it is).

However, they will never go for that because they are pig-headed. Instead, I would come up with a cleverly named policy revolving around optional participation in the government-run Healthcare scheme that no one can argue against.

For instance, take a look at the Patriot Act of 2001. Despite being a major infringement on our constitutional rights, no one could argue against it since it was called the Patriot Act, and it was somehow unpatriotic to question it.

Make a policy, instead of writing a 3000 page document of pointless and redundant information that is nearly impossible to read, that clearly lays out why the Healthcare Bill has no place in our democracy, and tell the world why it would never work.

Use your knowledge of economics to prove why Keynesian economics and utopian ideas would not work in our nation, and then give it a fancy name like the “Freedom to Choose Act,” that makes participation in the program optional. That is how this should be done. That is what we pay them for, after all,  to come up with ideas like this instead of shutting down the government.

Granted, I’m a conservative-minded individual. I already know there is at least one person on this campus who will criticize my ideas, post on Facebook about how poorly written this article is, and call me an idiot.

These people, however, are those that are allowing leeching to happen. Some may be right, because I am not an economics major or a lawyer. I haven’t taken economics and I don’t believe in being a politician.

But that doesn’t matter in this country. I am a college student who believes in the American Dream, and will do anything to revive it. I might not agree with your opinion, but I will defend the right for you to have that opinion until my bones give out and I am resting under ground.

Because that is what makes this nation so wonderful, and we can at least agree that we don’t want to lose the ability to think for ourselves.

Until we do, I will continue having this opinion until I find a reason to believe otherwise. Because that is what makes this nation great: we can have an opinion. And I don’t want that to disappear.