'US Has Become a Banana Republic' - Former Republican US Congressional Candidate

The US House of Representatives has endorsed legislation terminating a partial government shutdown in spite of President Donald Trump’s demand for border wall financing.

Radio Sputnik has discussed the recent developments surrounding the government shutdown with Shane Hazel, a former US congressional candidate from the GOP.

Sputnik: The House of Representatives has passed the bills to reopen the government. What challenges await the bills at the Republican-controlled Senate?

Shane Hazel: The interesting thing here is that the Republican-controlled Senate is probably not going to be on board with this but before we go down that route, constitutionally the House of Representatives per Article 1 section 7 point 1: "All Bills for raising revenue for our government originate in the House of Representatives". That has to be done. The Senate is more of a permissive environment in terms of raising revenue bills.

Laws and bills in the United States are not the same thing. Laws never expire, bills expire every two years with the Congress as they are re-elected because the former Congress cannot control the future Congresses in that regard for spending and it's permissive. It says: "but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on the Bill".

So even though the Senate may go in there and propose changes or concur with the bill it's not really up to them. And the biggest thing out of all of this is the executive is nowhere in this decision-making process for the purse here in the United States. So there will be a lot of misinformation out there in terms of the Senate holding this up as Republicans or Donald Trump closing this down because he's not getting his funding for the five billion, which is really kind of a blip in the US economy and the government anyway.

READ MORE: US House Approves Bills to End Govt Shutdown, Ignores Trump Veto Threats

But this is what people need to know, this is in the House of Representatives. All they're doing this for is to divide the people here in the United States. That is their MO (modus operandi), they want people divided so that they can do what they want to do as government and grow government power.

Sputnik: I see where the confusion can arise, because it is difficult for people who don't really know how it all happens to figure it out with the laws and the bills. Of course, President Trump we've been hearing this he's threatened to veto the bills if there's no funding for the southern border wall. Just break it down for us, will the shutdown drag on then?  

Shane Hazel: You know, I think most people do and I think it's not even fair to call it a shutdown. This is less than 8% of the entire budget for the US —8 %. So social security is funded, Medicare is funded, Medicaid is funded, food stamps are funded, the military is funded, the VA (Department of Veterans Affairs), the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Labor, HHS (Health and Human Services) and Congress are already funded. The interest has been already paid on the debt.

The only things that are shut down are things like NASA, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the Interior State Department, and USDA, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and DOJ (Department of Justice) and most of those guys don't have any constitutional business whatsoever even being a bureaucracy at the federal level. Most of those should be over in the states or at the private sector. None of this at the federal level is even important and most people aren't missing it. So in fact, when you look at the Joshua tree, Yosemite and the National Park services that are now full of trash and human waste there are people in private organisations funding the cleanup efforts at their state and local levels.

Sputnik: We've also seen, of course, the Republicans and Democrats blaming each other for the shutdown, there's been a lot of this finger pointing. In your opinion who's the culprit here?

Shane Hazel: They're both wings of the same bird. It's all show. It is one of those things where they parade this before the people and it's every year, it happens more and more frequently, they're only looking at funding this through February 8 which makes me question what happens before February 8 that maybe propels a new scenario, a new headline out there for people on the left and the right to hate each other. Americans and the rest of the world should see past this for what it is. And I actually kind of do you see this. I see a lot of things going on right now in this country, what I'll call American blowback.

Our government is now being seen for what it is by, I think, a vast majority of people; where you have people on both sides going you know it is the Democrats and it's the Republicans, they're both tyrants, they're coming up with more and more government, taking more and more of our money, our property and completely, completely ignoring our rights. And that's the problem.

READ MORE: US Gov't Shutdown is Only Because of the 2020 Presidential Election — Trump

We have an out-of-control government in the United States right now, which I believe the people are starting to recognise and there's going to be a correction and there's gonna be a correction in the very, very near future I believe; especially once we see the economy in probably later 2019, maybe the summer of 2020, because let's face it, we're on borrowed time right now, at $21 trillion and we're running a $1.3 trillion deficit and spending over $4 trillion a year. That's not sustainable. The rest of the world sees it. When our credit rating goes down that's when it's all going to hit. And there's already talks of replacement currencies through crypto, agorism, bimetallism and things like that.

So what you are going to see here in the United States, unfortunately, I hope it doesn't turn into violence, but in some areas of the country, it may. And the United States, as far as I can tell you, we have become a banana republic. There's no justice. We are insolvent, in debt, we've been running amok throughout the world militarily through our State Department, our CIA, the DEA, the ATF, the FBI all these bureaucratic organisations on top of the military industrial complex are coming to an end and they're flailing right now. And I will kind of give Donald Trump a little credit there, those things are flailing because he's not part of the establishment. He's a narcissist, he's a guy that I wouldn't trust my kids around and all that fun stuff, but at the same time I definitely think there's something to him being in office and these guys being exposed.

I mean the mass media is exposed, the deep state in terms of the bureaucracy is exposed and now with the peace that he's been talking about with Russia, with North Korea, and pulling people out of Syria and the Middle East it has exposed all of them, left and right, and the intelligence apparatuses here in the United States. So I hope this comes apart peacefully and then the states can re-organize in a much different way and we might look a little different geographically, but there's a huge change coming in the very near future in the United States.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Shane Hazel and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.