The Myth Working

Since I'm watching the news all day and am tired of this.

You may have heard that unless there is some budget compromise in 12 days, the government will run out of money.

This is bullshit.

1) The government will not "run out of money", what will run out is it's authority to spend money (or write the checks). It's being stated this way to feed into the whole, "We're broke" meme.

2) This isn't a budget, this is an appropriations bill. They are different. The budget is a "wish" list that is a very long term plan. An appropriations bill says, "We have this money this year, and these people can spend through this budget line." It's the appropriations that gives the authority for the government to spend money. Unless Congress passes either a Continuing Resolution (which means, "for this amount of time, the government is allowed to spend at a prorated basis of the previously approved appropriations") or a new appropriations bill (which this is) departments and the treasury don't have the authority to cut checks (no matter what the actual revenues are).

So if nothing is done in 12 days, the government (except for essential services) will shut down, because the individual departments and the treasury no longer have the authority to spend money. Essential services are kept running on IOUs (you may remember when California needed to do this a few years ago).

Your liberal media at work.