Stop the presses, the government has shut down! Ron Paul fans rejoice and anarchists everywhere get ready for your dream come true! No more military, no more voting, just a country for the people, by the people, of the people.
If the above statement is what you were hoping for, I am sorry to inform you that this government shutdown is a little less exciting. We still have an inefficient government full of Capitol Hill gridlock, lack of compromise and polarizing political parties. The unfortunate state of the Union now is that all of these issues have come to a head and it is affecting everyone – ready or not.
The shutdown is due to Congress failing to pass a budget by October 1. Their main sticking point has been the funding of Obamacare, which as the name implies, is unpopular with most Republicans.
Obama and Senate Democrats are quite upset about all of this – and with good reason. In recent years, the Republican-led House of Representatives seems to have had one goal: disagreeing and bickering about Obamacare. The House has taken a stand to remain steadfast in disagreement rather than to pass a budget that includes funding Obamacare. If their purpose was to show how Republicans are more radical than they have ever been, then that point has been made quite effectively.
How effectively? Here are the hard facts that our country faces: Of the 2.1 million government workers out there, 800,000 are currently on furlough (unpaid time off) until further notice. They will not be working until our legislators agree to a deal that funds the government. What is worse is that the rest are required to come to work without being paid! These 1.3 million “essential” workers will be paid back-pay only once the government is up and running again, but the 800,000 non-essential workers are out of luck completely. That alone is a huge shock to the economy. This many people out of work until further notice, for our recovering economy, could lead to disaster.
Then the shutdown reaches beyond government employees and affects every single American as well. All national parks and museums are closed until further notice. No more Glacier National Park, no more Smithsonian. Worse yet, government programs such as the Supplemental Nutritional Aid Program (food stamps) will not be disbursed and millions of low income mothers and children will now be without benefits.
There are even more secondary consequences of this shutdown as well. The view of America as a world power will be lessened because of all of this. We as a country being unable to pass such a mundane task as a budget all because of bickering over Obamacare will make other countries question the influence the United States has in the world.
This is a disaster for a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. The coming days in America will be very strange. Life will go on like normal, many essential government jobs will still stay active, but there will be a growing tension and the longer this lasts the bigger negative impact it will have on our economy.
There is still hope, though! Obama has made multiple attempts to sit with head Republicans in Congress to try and meet a compromise. His Twitter is full of passionate pleas and his speeches are two steps away from begging. At the time of writing, a handful of Congressmen have urged their counterparts to put party affiliations aside and do what is best for the country. Swallowing their pride and passing a budget is the only solution, and the faster this is done, the faster we can all recover from this shutdown that should have never occurred from the beginning.
