The government’s lights have gone out. For the first time in over ten years, our government has shut down, as a result of the Republican House and Democratic Senate failing to agree on government spending and our nation’s budget.  However, this situation was completely avoidable; the House Republicans made several attempts to compromise with the Senate Democrats to prevent this shutdown, but the Democrats refused to compromise with the House Republicans, causing this unfortunate result.

The House’s attempts included a bill that would defund Obamacare. Obamacare is expected to cost the US government over nearly $2 trillion over the next decade, making this a sensible area to cut spending, especially considering all of the harm that this law will cause the American people, including increased healthcare costs and a doctor shortage. Despite the reasonable nature of this common-sense proposal, the Democrats in the Senate rejected this sensible compromise.

Instead of defunding Obamacare, the Republicans tried several more times to compromise, by proposing to delay the individual mandate of Obamacare for one year. While Obamacare would still go into effect under this proposal, those without healthcare would not be mandated to purchase Obamacare. This was truly a fair compromise; President Barack Obama has granted numerous waivers of this requirement for big businesses and unions, and the American people deserve a waiver as well. In other words, this proposal would make Obamacare optional for Americans without insurance, saving taxpayers a large amount of money.

Senate Democrats shut down the idea, too, and as a result, shut down the government. It seems that they really have no desire to make a deal with House Republicans; it is as if they did not want to thwart the shutdown.

There have been no attempts at compromise, and no negotiations coming from the Democratic majority in the Senate. The House Republicans made compromise after compromise, concession after concession on the resolution, hoping to strike a deal that the Senate would accept, for the sake of avoiding the shutdown. Yet, the Democrats saw no room for negotiation; they simply voted against the efforts made by the House in order to thwart the shutdown. In fact, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, even stated that he would keep the Senate in session late Monday night, just for the sake of rejecting any proposal set forth by the House.

Why are the Democrats so opposed to a compromise? Why have they still yet to pass a budget? The answer is the dirty game of politics.

The goal of the Democrats was and is to allow the shutdown to happen, in order to blame it on the House Republicans. The shutdown has angered Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, as the Democrats knew it would. By attempting to blame it on the Republicans, the Democrats are seeking to win back the House in 2014.