With a two percent increase in Mississippi’s poverty rate, we continue to drift as the poorest state in the United States. In the same lifeboat with us drifts the fragile U.S. economy.
  The president, Congress and Senate will be in disaster-management mode as we lynch to yet another recession, as predicted by expert economists.
   Unless you are one of the lucky few, there is little about the economy that looks robust, the Wall Street Journal reports.
   In her principles of macroeconomics class at Mississippi State University, professor Meghan Millea informed her students about durable goods and the logic of relating it with the economy.
 “When people start buying more durable goods which lasts three years or longer, we can say the economy is doing well. It is simple,” Millea said.
   Reuters, an international news agency said in a report on Aug. 26, “Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods recorded their biggest drop in nearly a year in July, and a gauge of planned business spending on capital goods also tumbled, casting a shadow over the economy early in the third quarter.”
  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s recently released report, highly skilled young workers have traditionally provided a vital influx of new, affluent consumers to U.S. housing and auto markets. Unprecedented student debt may dampen their influence in today’s marketplace.
  The House of Representatives is expected to pass a resolution on Friday that will allow government spending to continue beyond Sept. 30 only if funding is withdrawn from Obamacare.
 Anyone who has followed American politics closely since Obama’s victory in 2008 will agree that the Democrats in the Senate or the president will deny this at the very outset. 
  The vote sets up 10 days of tense political brinkmanship that could lead to a partial government shutdown. 
     Experts warn the danger of an accidental government shutdown or debt default, which may pose a serious risk to the U.S. economy.
     Robert Reich, political economist, writes on his personal website, “A shutdown would be crippling. Soldiers would get IOUs instead of paychecks. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees would be furloughed without pay. National parks would close. Millions of Americans would feel the effects.” 
  According to a recent CNN poll, 51 percent of Americans would blame the Republicans for a shutdown and 33 percent would blame the President. 
    A recession will be the last thing we want on our plate. President Obama has done a considerably good job in raising the numbers of economic growth and decreasing the ones for unemployment.
He will want to continue this success streak.
  Harry Dent, a financial author, wrote in his September H.S. Dent Forecast newsletter,  “Economists who believe the U.S. economy is now firmly on the road to a sustainable recovery are utterly deluded.” He sees the possibility of a sharp decline starting in the first half of next year. He expects the economy “gets worse, possibly dramatically worse, in the first three quarters of 2014.”
     The electorate cares less about the economy during normal functioning, but it turns into a hot topic of debate during elections. For voters, the state of the economy is one of the defining factors when they go out to vote.
    Thirty-three out of the 100 Senate seats run for elections in November next year. The Republican Party will look to make inroads into the Senate, where they do not enjoy a majority at present. 
     The party policies and stands taken today could haunt the GOP in the near future, a government shut-down will only multiply, if not solve, any problems. 
    As common tax-paying citizens,  we will want the president, the Democrats or the Republicans to ease the tense situation in Washington to prevent this potential shut down affecting all of us. Someone will have to take the moral high ground and call it quits or prepare for a negotiation.What will be interesting is to see who will have the last laugh in this heated contentious issue? A potential military engagement followed by a government shutdown will be hard to digest in the coming weeks.
     At present, I neither want to be the president nor a politician in Washington, D.C.