Salmonella — It's What's For Dinner, Thanks to Obama

Seven days into the government shutdown, the feds are faced with an opponent much bigger than wheelchair-bound veterans: a salmonella-laced chicken outbreak across 18 states.

For the second time this year, Foster Farms has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella. As part of the government shutdown, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) does not currently have the personnel to combat a multi-state outbreak. There will be no cross-state consultation or lab work done until the end of the shutdown as it is currently constructed. Luckily for the federal government, I'm a solutions-oriented guy and have figured out a way we can swing excepting this money to the CDC and stop this outbreak from harming any more people. Let's stop making the shutdown hurt more than it's supposed too.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Park Service (NPS) have "Barry-caded" open-air monuments, something that was not done in the 1995-96 shutdown. They've guarded the WWII memorial and have tried to prevent people from pulling over and viewing Mount Rushmore. All of this surely cost more than leaving the open-air monuments available for all to see without a federal employee working the informational booth. Websites have been shutdown with no regard to cost or whether their program was still being run, like the Amber Alert system. A federal employee was also taken off furlough to put the Amber Alert website back up following political backlash despite no appropriations bill being passed.

Let's send these NPS officials home with these computer programmers who seem to be at the beck and call of the OMB's political agenda and pay the CDC the money it needs to combat the salmonella outbreak. If you don't want to do that, at least stop pretending this shutdown is about saving money when the OMB has instructed websites be pulled regardless of cost, and the government is barricading open-air parks and guarding them to stop "trespassers."

There's no excuse for this to be happening and there's no excuse as to why it can't be solved. Stop playing games with our health.