The Federal government shut-down has been further delayed to mid-Nov. after a short-term funding bill was approved by Congress to pay federal employees. Federal agencies will now remain open until Nov. 17, unless a solution is found.
In order to avoid a shutdown, 12 spending bills would need to be approved to fund federal government agencies across the country. With the debt ceiling being increased to avoid a crisis in Jan. some members of Congress are hesitant to increase spending.
Once the deadline is reached, the federal government will have to shut down because there is not enough funding to pay federal employees. The blame is being placed on radical republican representatives, and White House budget Director, Shalanda Young, who claims that President Biden shouldn’t be blamed. She accused the republican members of the house of “being cavalier with people’s lives.”
House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, gave up on his attempts to cut spending after several days, but he also cut funding to aid Ukraine in their war against Russia.
President Biden said that the short term spending bill is good news for the American people but that the United States, “cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.”
Senior Ridge Kayser said, “It’s a shame that some of our representatives put their own politics before the good of the country.”
Without the current spending bill, nonessential federal workers would have been suspended from work without pay, and over two million active duty military members would have had to work without pay.
After McCarthy’s decision to abandon the spending cuts, he faced some dire consequences. He is the first Speaker of the House in United States history to be voted out of office. He has stated that he will not run for the position again, and the republican party has been left with no clear candidate for a new speaker. While they try to elect a new speaker, action has been halted in the house of representatives.
If the new deadline is reached before the spending bills are approved, all non essential government workers will be suspended from work without pay, until the bills are approved. This means that nearly all federal employees could go weeks without a paycheck or means to pay their bills or feed their families. This means that those non-essential services would no longer be available to American citizens for the remainder of the shutdown.
Additionally, employees who are considered essential workers like healthcare workers and military service members will likely have to work without pay until the shutdown ends.
Senior Alec Nigro said, “Congress needs to help the American people and start doing their jobs.”
Hopefully Congress can put politics aside and come up with a solution to this issue before the American people and federal employees suffer the consequences of Congress’s actions.
