With the recent US government shutdown taking over newsrooms all over the world, HC Nottingham takes a look at what happened and why it has such a big impact on the world.
1. What does it mean?
The US political system was made intentionally complex and often creates conflict between the two main parties. Each year the President presents to Congress recommendations of funding levels for the next fiscal year. Congress has to pass this bill in order for it to take effect. However the branches of government haven’t been able to reach an agreement and have not passed the bill therefore resulting in a ‘funding gap’ – thus government has been forcibly shutdown. The government shutdown will affect millions of people. It has meant that 700,000 federal employees are faced with the prospect of unpaid leave. President Obama said of the impending shutdown that it would have, “”a very real economic impact on real people, right away,” so the impact of a shutdown of government business is significant and ideally avoided.
2. Who’s leading the charge?
The Republican led House – often the more vitriolic of the two houses- have raised issue with the parts of the budget pertaining to Obama’s healthcare reforms or ‘Obamacare’. A number of Republicans from both houses have claimed ‘Obamacare’ to be unconstitutional, however parts of health care reforms were signed into law in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court to be constitutional. The speaker of the House, John Boehner, is a key figure in the disarray and political animosity that is currently consuming the House of Representatives. His motivations are somewhat unclear but appeasing the Republican leadership seems to be a prevalent theory by onlookers.
(left John Boehner, speaker of the House and right President Obama)
3. What do the Republicans want?
Their concerns are primarily to do with the president’s healthcare law and on financial and environmental regulation. However the Republicans are coming under increased criticism for their arguably unjust behaviour. The BBC’s North America editor Mark Mardell described the Republican leadership as feeling “trapped” and specified that the Republicans “made demands that they knew wouldn’t be met rather than be accused of weakness and betrayal by their own hardliners”.
4. What do the Democrats think?
Having signed such a significant part of healthcare reform into law – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act- in 2010 the Democrats were always likely to maintain and present a strong front when it came to the negotiations over the new health care reforms. Whilst it would seem that much of the blame lies with the Republicans, polls have showed that Obama has not been able to escape blame despite the Republicans somewhat vicious performance. A poll courtesy of The Guardian showed that overall, 62% blamed Republicans for the shutdown and nearly half held Obama or the Democrats in Congress responsible. So it doesn’t look good for either party. Perhaps the fact it’s the first government shutdown in seventeen years would indicate that Washington politics is becoming detrimental to the functionality of American government working effectively.
5. A resolution?
In order for government business to re-open Congress needs to pass a bill or a number of bills to fund the government and the President has to sign them into law. There is no time limit, a lot of the waiting is purely political stalemate. It’s now a question of how long this stalemate will last and who is willing to compromise – and how far?