Last week’s shutdown showdown provided some high drama for the country and the aftermath is providing high drama for budget geeks. What was once thought of as a $38 billion cut is now estimated to be actually $352 million this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Now it looks like at least two NASA earmarks have made their way into the continuing resolution.

Ok, so President Obama has finally laid out his plan for balancing the budget and getting the federal government back on track fiscally. I am not going to use this blog to talk about how he should have done this in 2009 when he took office by not signing the Stimulus Bill or how he should have done this when he released his fiscal year (FY) 2012 back in February. Let’s instead look at some of the details.

There is a battle brewing over catfish. This is not a debate over fried or poached, this is a debate on government regulation of catfish. Even though seafood is inspected by the Food and Drug Administration, there is a move to have foreign catfish put under the purview of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) inspection regime. While this may sound benign, it is a move that could drive up prices, add layers of bureaucracy to an industry that doesn’t need it and burden taxpayers with yet another expensive bureaucracy. After all is said and done, the move will not increase the safety of catfish and the addition of another inspection program would force the hiring of 90 inspectors and eventually spawn a new government inspection bureaucracy that will end up costing hundreds of millions.

With trillion dollar deficits and a scarcity of spending cuts, it is expected that there will be a need for an increase in the statutory cap on the national debt (read: a raising of the debt ceiling) in May. The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of debt a country can take on. Currently, according to the Treasury Department, the debt has surpassed $14.2 trillion.

There has been quite a bit of talk about the government shut down and who to blame. While it is tempting, and probably accurate, to blame all the “bums” in Congress, there have been serious lapses in leadership from the Democrats. The Democrats failed to pass a budget when they controlled the House, Senate, and White House.

Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) released his much anticipated fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget. Ryan’s budget should be a wake-up call to members of Congress and all Americans. It contains $6 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years and it takes on the tough task of entitlement spending.