Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed the bill passed by the House and Senate to raise the debt limit and begin to get a handle on the increasing deficit and federal debt. The news and pundit cycles have talked of nearly nothing else, and the armchair quarterbacking and second-guessing and hypotheticals will likely continue for several days. So much has been written about it that adding more words to the pile seems like a waste of time at this point. Now that it's done, what's next?

The President HAS to use some creativity for job creation. That seems to be his focus now:

Congress, meanwhile, has decided to take the rest of the month off. The House is shut down completely. They left town without ever voting to reauthorize the FAA. This means they'll be enjoying their paid vacations while thousands of workers are forced into unpaid furloughs:

How many of these Congresspeople are flying home? I hope airline workers give them all a big finger for caring so little about their fellow countrymen and the tax revenue that their work generates.

Of course - Republicans have some priorities still in place. The Senate isn't completely shut down. They are maintaining a skeleton crew so that President Obama can't make any recess appointments; specifically, so he can't appoint a head to the Consumer Protection Agency. The Republicans have vowed to prevent that agency from actually doing anything. It's nice to know they care more about protecting business than protecting the people. That's not really surprising, I know.

Besides FAA workers and consumers being cast aside in favor of business, another casualty of this protracted battle over the debt ceiling is our country's good credit rating. Moody's maintained our triple-A rating, but added a negative outlook because economic growth looks weak in the future. The Chinese were not so kind, downgrading us from A+ to A. Their rationale?

Nice, coming from the country that has the largest chunk of our public debt. They buy tons of bonds from us, then tell us we're over-extended? Are they hoping to get a higher interest rate on their bond holdings (or future holdings)?

This is all strangely reminiscent of the Carter administration, considering we have problems in the Middle East, a great foreign policy but discord at home, economic malaise... I just hope that President Obama can make things happen over the next 15 months.