U.S. hours away from first government shutdown

[Flying Purple People Eater]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-0...-years/4990254

US government shutdown looms as Congress stalemate continues over Obamacare

By North America correspondent Michael Vincent, wires
Updated October 01, 2013 14:16:23



Photo: Barack Obama must sign a new budget by midnight (local time) to keep the US government working. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
Map: United States

Tens of thousands of US government workers are preparing to stay home as Congress steps closer to shutting down departments over president Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.
US Senate Democrats killed a proposal by the Republican-led House of Representatives to delay Obamacare for a year in return for temporary funding of the federal government beyond Monday (local time).
After a partisan vote of 54 to 46 in the Senate, it now goes back to the House, where a senior Republican aide said the party would continue to seek a one-year delay in the Obamacare requirement for all individuals to obtain health insurance as part of a new spending bill.

Audio: US government facing shutdown over healthcare (AM)

Mr Obama must sign a new budget by midnight (2:00pm AEST) to keep the US government working, or otherwise trigger the first shutdown of services in 17 years.
Mr Obama says time is running out and has accused Republicans of pandering to the "extreme right wing" of their party and holding Americans hostage in the budget dispute.
Key points

• Congress must agree on budget by October 1
• Republicans are demanding Obamacare be stripped of funding as condition to keep funding government
• The Senate rejected Republican bill to delay Obamacare for one year
• If the new budget isn't agreed to by midnight, Congress will shut down all non-essential government services
• 700,000 government employees will be sent home without pay
• Shutdown will continue until Congress reaches deal
• The last shutdown in 1996 lasted 20 days

"One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn't get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election," he said.
"Congress needs to keep our government open, needs to pay our bills on time, and never, ever threaten the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
He says the shutdown would have dramatic consequences for thousands of Americans.
"Time is running out. My hope and expectation is that in the 11th hour once again, that Congress will choose to do the right thing and that the House of Representatives in particular will choose the right thing," he said.
"Unfortunately, right now, House Republicans continue to tie funding of the government to ideological demands like limiting a woman's access to contraception or delaying the Affordable Care Act, all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party."
Mr Obama placed phone calls to the two top congressional Republicans, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, but they appeared to restate well-worn positions and there was no sign of a breakthrough.
What does the shutdown mean for our economy? Read about that here.


700,000 government workers face unpaid leave

Some 700,000 government workers could be sent home on unpaid leave with no guarantee of backpay once the deadlock is over.
Some services such as homeland security, weather monitoring and food inspections will continue, but they will be paid in IOUs.
Who is affected?

• 800,000 government employees sent home without pay
• 1 million asked to work without pay
• Department of Education staff will be severely hit
• Skeleton staff to remain at Department of Energy to oversee nuclear arsenal
• National parks, Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz will close
• Washington's Smithsonian Institution, including 19 galleries and the National Zoo will close
• Passport offices in the US will shut down and visa applications will go unprocessed overseas
• In Washington, libraries will be closed, parking tickets won't be issued

The Senate has so far rejected all House efforts to modify the health law in connection with the spending bill.
Mr Obama, saying he was not "resigned" to a shutdown, said ahead of the Senate vote that he planned to talk to congressional leaders in the coming hours and days but held out no new offer of compromise.
A shutdown would continue until Congress resolves its differences. That could be a matter of days, or weeks.
Global stock markets fell and the dollar dropped against major currencies overnight as investors worried about the prospects of a shutdown.
"The government is such an important part of the entire economy, between the people it employs and the impact it has on consumer confidence," said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group in New York.
"The size of the sell-off is logical given the stakes."
The standoff did not bode well for the next political battle, a far-more consequential bill to raise the government's borrowing authority.
Failure to raise the $US16.7 trillion debt ceiling by mid-October would force the US to default on some payment obligations - an event that could cripple its economy and send shockwaves around the globe.
The two parties continued to blame each other on Monday for failing to avoid the impending shutdown. Republicans accused Mr Obama of ignoring their pleas for negotiations.
"This president hasn't been involved at all with the leadership or with the Congress," Representative Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican, told MSNBC.
But he said Republicans would not give up their quest to thwart the implementation of Obamacare, a program aimed at providing healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.
Republicans accused of 'extortion'

Republicans say the launch on Tuesday of new online government health insurance exchanges will cause premiums to rise and deter companies from hiring new workers.
Mr Salmon, who was in Congress during the last shutdown from late 1995 to early 1996, said Republicans do not want to see a shutdown but would keep fighting against Obamacare with another proposal.
"We should go back at them," he said.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said he was still holding out some hope that the House Republicans "would come to their senses" and vote to keep the government open.
"It is extortion," Mr Schumer, speaking to MSNBC, said of the Republicans' strategy.
"It's holding the good of the country - the economy, middle-class people at risk."
Early on Sunday, House Republicans passed measures to attach the Obamacare delay and the repeal of the medical device tax to the stop-gap spending bill that would keep government agencies open until November 15.
In a sign that a shutdown may look increasingly inevitable, the House also unanimously passed a separate measure to keep paying US soldiers in the event of a shutdown.
More people will blame congressional Republicans rather than Mr Obama if the US government shuts down this week and most want a budget deal to avoid disruption to federal funding and services, a poll released on Monday showed.
Forty-six per cent said that if government agencies and programs start closing on Tuesday, they would fault Republicans in Congress while 36 per cent said they would blame Mr Obama, the CNN survey found.
Thirteen per cent said both would be at fault.
About 60 per cent of the 803 US adults polled said they want lawmakers to pass a budget agreement to avoid the shutdown, according to the telephone survey conducted over the weekend with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Welp, it happened.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I guess they'll have to ground all those drone planes and shut down all those military bases for a while... oh wait.

[Sea]

parking tickets won't be issued

You know what this means. Park on the sidewalk, it's revolution time!

[alkemest]

What is this called, Washington monument syndrome I believe? Where our wisened oligarchy sees fit to cut salaries for visible public servants, while maintaining their own six digit salaries, military and law enforcement funds, while throwing millions of people under the bus. Fucking fantastic, right?

[Popular Front of Judea]

WASHINGTON, United States—The typical signs of state failure aren’t evident on the streets of this sleepy capital city. Beret-wearing colonels have not yet taken to the airwaves to declare martial law. Money-changers are not yet buying stacks of useless greenbacks on the street.
But the pleasant autumn weather disguises a government teetering on the brink. Because, at midnight Monday night, the government of this intensely proud and nationalistic people will shut down, a drastic sign of political dysfunction in this moribund republic.

The capital’s rival clans find themselves at an impasse, unable to agree on a measure that will allow the American state to carry out its most basic functions. While the factions have come close to such a shutdown before, opponents of President Barack Obama’s embattled regime now appear prepared to allow the government to be shuttered over opposition to a controversial plan intended to bring the nation’s health care system in line with international standards.

Six years into his rule, Obama’s position can appear confusing, even contradictory. Though the executive retains control of the country’s powerful intelligence service, capable of the extrajudicial execution of the regime’s opponents half a world away, the president’s efforts to govern domestically have been stymied in the legislature by an extremist rump faction of the main opposition party.

The current rebellion has been led by Sen. Ted Cruz, a young fundamentalist lawmaker from the restive Texas region, known in the past as a hotbed of separatist activity. Activity in the legislature ground to a halt last week for a full day as Cruz insisted on performing a time-honored American demonstration of stamina and self-denial, which involved speaking for 21 hours, quoting liberally from science fiction films and children’s books. The gesture drew wide media attention, though its political purpose was unclear to outsiders.

With hours remaining until the government of the world’s richest nation runs out of money, attention now focuses on longtime opposition leader John Boehner, under pressure from both the regime and the radical elements of his own movement, who may be the only political figure with the standing needed to end the standoff.

While the country’s most recent elections were generally considered to be free and fair (despite threats against international observers), the current crisis has raised questions in the international community about the regime’s ability to govern this complex nation of 300 million people, not to mention its vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Americans themselves are starting to ask difficult questions as well. As this correspondent’s cab driver put it, while driving down the poorly maintained roads that lead from the airport, “Do these guys have any idea what they’re doing to the country?

If It Happened There ... the Government Shutdown | Slate

[KurtFF8]

"U.S. hours away from first government shutdown"

This is not the first govt shutdown, there was one in the 1990s

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Jeeze. One of those times you wish the left was more prepared to launch into action, eh?
Strong argument for building effective counter-institutions right there, even if they seem immediately unnecessary, since . . . well, arguably this sort of thing is inevitable.

[Misericordia]

Hey at least now we can make terrorist jokes on Facebook and Twitter without the NSA putting us on watch lists.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Hey at least now we can make terrorist jokes on Facebook and Twitter without the NSA putting us on watch lists.

National security is exempt.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Hey at least now we can make terrorist jokes on Facebook and Twitter without the NSA putting us on watch lists.

As Takayuki said, national security and the American military still retain power.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

This is pretty terrible all around. The US government's basic services are down, a bunch of federal workers are not being paid and may not get back pay when all this is over, places like parks and monuments will be closed indefinitely, and the military is still bombing/occupying a bunch of countries since defense is exempt.

It shows how dysfunctional the US government has become though. The Republicans are basically undermining the economy and the government at once to score some cheap political points (though history has just shown that they are more likely to be blamed for the government shutdown anyways.)

"U.S. hours away from first government shutdown"

This is not the first govt shutdown, there was one in the 1990s

Apparently there have been quite a few, including one in the 80s when Dems and Republicans disagreed about Contra funding.

[Marxaveli]

This is the 17th time in the US governments history that it has done this, if I recall correctly.

Guess the lords of private capital are at a standstill because one far right party insists on pandering to their fascist Tea Party base, because the other, center-right party is just a little too much to the left of Hayek for their liking.

I think I want to throw up. This fucking country sucks, with its shallowness and apathy - forget Christianity, 'consumerism' is the new religion of American capitalism and culture. Meanwhile we keep votin' for the same pricks of two parties that are one and the same. I want to move out so bad but can't right now. Not that it is much better anywhere else, but jesus fucking christ....

[Comrade Jacob]

Good, let it shut down forever.
Since no police will be on duty...smashing time. EDIT: oh they are, damn it!

[Marxaveli]

Good, let it shut down forever.
Since no police will be on duty...smashing time.

No, police will be on duty.

[khad]

Good, let it shut down forever.
Since no police will be on duty...smashing time.

Police fall under state and municipal jurisdiction.

[Rosso]

Finally they have their chance to get some healthcare and now they're only causing trouble and damage their economy even more. It's time for the Americans to realize they wont get any further keeping this conservative attitude..

[Popular Front of Judea]

Good, let it shut down forever.
Since no police will be on duty...smashing time.

Well informed radical analysis of current events. That's why I read Revleft.

[argeiphontes]

The harsh whip of capitalism will remain in full swing, I'm afraid. Police are considered essential.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Not a Daily News fan but I like this. Subtle.