As we near the longest shutdown in history I wanted to put a few of my personal thoughts out here. 

This entire petition started before the shutdown started. I was angry because of a fine I had to pay - a small one but it dawned on me that we are fined all the time for things beyond our control. WE are fined but our elected officials haven’t met the deadline for a budget since 1997!! And they face ZERO consequences for it. When we are late paying a utility bill, paying our taxes, or licensing our cars we are fined - no questions just fined. Regardless of our political affiliations.

There are ZERO penalties when our elected officials can’t behave like adults instead of entitled toddlers. There are 435 individuals we elected to Congress and 100 members we elected to the Senate - 535 individuals that we have allowed to live privileged lives to represent us and are in charge of the annual budget who are NOT representing the people that elected them but corporations and lobbyists and fail year after year to do their job! Congress controls “the purse strings”, not Trump - 535 self important individuals who feel their special interests are more important than your bills (they aren’t going to pay your late fees), and they don’t care if you can put food on the table either obviously. It takes 60 votes to pass and when you see the votes so clearly divided along party lines that is very clearly a problem of party over citizens! It doesn’t matter what party controls the House or Senate - the way that vote is structured needing 60 votes to pass or fail. With just 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats in the Senate that means they have to work together which they are clearly making no effort to do!! 

I was hoping our elected officials would at least see the comments and signatures and realize that every day citizens are fed up with their entitled BS - doesn’t seem to be the case so far. Not sure if it’s because we don’t have enough signatures or if they really don’t care but I’m sure of 1 thing - we have to stop pointing fingers at one individual or another on the left or right and hold them ALL accountable or we are no better than them.