As much as paying the clowns in congress while the government is shut down sucks, it's hard to believe that comes anywhere remotely close in importance to the concept of the Fed having the Treasury print up $85 billion out of thin air per month to buy up toxic assets from the "too big to fail" banks that in all likelihood will never regain the face value the Fed is paying for them. The Fed is into this for at least a trillion dollars. This is just another way for the big banks to privatize the profits and socialize the losses, and that's the loss on debt the banks wrote that they tried to pawn off on unsuspecting buyers using fraudulent AAA bond ratings until the buyers caught on and quite buying them. Now the Fed is the buyer of last resort and we are going to be holding the empty bag in the form of massive inflation or economic crash. Remember that Paulson was threatening Congress with the likelihood that marshal law would have to be instated if Congress didn't bail the banks out.

Maybe this will help:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse/chapter-8-fed-money-creation