Rosangel Lalondriz Perry
After months of long conversations and debate, the United States Senate still cannot come to a decision about the government funding and is putting millions of people’s jobs on the line.
Starting almost three weeks ago, the public got word of conversations taking place in the House of Representatives about a government shutdown happening by September 30th. What this would mean is millions of people, who work in government funded positions, would not be able to work and those whose jobs are deemed necessities would be forced to work without pay.
Examples of people who would be affected by this are the United States military, NASA, and 2,000 long- term natural disaster recovery plans, according to the live coverage being reported by NBC News.
The way this started was when President Biden and Republican Kevin McCarthy, who is the speaker of the House of Representatives, agreed in May to authorize $1.59 trillion in spending for the next fiscal year.
Now Rep. McCarthy has backed out of the plan after being strongly encouraged by the hard- right Republican representatives in congress. The Republican representatives have the power to remove him as speaker, so he is bending to their will in order to maintain his place.
Backing out of this previously established plan, most of the Congress does not find logical, including our President. In a press released twitter video, President Biden said “Now there’s a small group of extreme house republicans who don’t want to live up to that deal so they are determined to shut down our government and shut it down now and it makes no sense.”
This plan would overall benefit the United States economy by cutting the Government deficit by 1 trillion dollars.
Zach Kimball, a professor at Delaware State University commented on what’s going on in our government: “I think the government shutdown really shines a light on the flaws we have in the system right now, a few people can make a decision that causes everyone to be unable to do the work they need to do.
This is not the first time our government has been faced with such a problem. The last government shutdown was during Trump’s run as president and lasted from Sat, Dec 22, 2018 – Fri, Jan 25, 2019.
News has been released by NBC that even if the government does shutdown, Social Security Payments will keep being distributed due to it being considered a mandatory program. Although other government assistance programs have not been commented on in detail.
Anthony Jackson, a junior at Delaware State University, shared his thoughts: “Seeing how slowly the government has been taking action to fix the hole they dug themselves is truly disappointing. Especially since this is going to affect everyone. Rather, not getting paid for your hard work or not getting the government assisted money people rely on will have a ripple effect that no one will benefit from.”
Conversations about temporary solutions are now at the forefront. Republicans are still hesitating to jump on board. Rep. Tim Burchett is reported to have been mocking the Congress due to them “frantically” trying to solve the shutdown even though they have known about the Sept 30th deadline since last December. The next vote by the house will be taking place Thursday September 28th and will focus heavily on short term solutions to prevent a government shutdown.
On Sept 30th the house of representatives came to an agreement less than 3 hours before the deadline. Rep. McCarthy offered a plan that would keep the government open for 40+ days. This won over the House democratic and the majority of House Republicans.
The voting results came in at 335-91, 90 Republicans and 1 Democrat voted against it. This resolution will provide funding for the disaster relief funds, an extension of a federal flood insurance program.