What we’re facing now is not just a budgetary challenge — it’s a moral one. A country that refuses to live within its means has lost something fundamental: its discipline, its honesty, its sense of responsibility to future generations. The national debt is not an abstract figure; it is the accumulated record of our moral failure to govern ourselves.

Government shutdowns hit everyone. That's why our elected officials must compromise, even if it may cost them politically. Billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of livelihoods are at stake, and not just federal workers'. This isn't about them; it's about the people they serve.

The truth is this: Peace will never be achieved by rewarding terrorism. Peace will never be achieved by pretending that both sides are equally at fault when one side builds schools and hospitals while the other side builds tunnels and stockpiles rockets. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever.