What you need to know about the Government Shutdown?

Are you worried about the end-results of the Government Shutdown? Well, you have every right to be.

ObamaCare was one of the hot topics in the discussion and both the parties were unable to reach any consensus over the Health Care Act. If you are keen to catch up with the most important aspects of the Government shutdown, here is a quick list:

• Reason behind the Government Shutdown: One of the pivotal roles of Congress is to pass the spending bills of the government. In case of a failure in doing so, most of the functions performed by the government are halted until further action. The only functions that are funded include social security, active military pay, and air traffic control.
• Is it the appropriate time for passing the funding bill: Unlike the fiscal year in the commercial world (April 1^st to March 31^st), the fiscal year of the government starts on 1 October to 30 September.
• Major concern of the Republicans: The House of Republicans are insisting over the provision of defunding, derailing, and even complete shutdown to be included in any new bill. However, the Senate Democrats are just as ignorant about the ruling as they could!
• Why ObamaCare is an important discussion in the funding bill: ObamaCare is the signature policy of Obama’s government and the Republicans are using it as their leverage. The Republicans are convinced that the policy is excessively bad and has the potential to break off the government funding.
• Primary Objections concerning ObamaCare: One of the basic requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is for all Americans to have a health insurance. The Republicans believe that the act will hurt majority of the employers and the medical device tax might even send several jobs overseas.
• Democrat’s Defensive Stand: The Democrats believe that ObamaCare will increase the access to health care and allow low-credit Americans to have health coverage. The Senate believes that it will help patients with pre-existing conditions and the consumers will not pay indirectly for the uninsured patients admitted in the hospitals.
• Development in the Spending Bill during weekend: Two major spending bill amendments were passed on Sunday morning. The first amendment is to delay the ObamaCare program for one year and the second one is to revoke the medical device tax mentioned in the health reform. However, the Democrats declared any changes in the deal as “deal-killers.”
• Developments until Overnight (including Monday): The latest House Proposal was rejected by the Senate forcing the House to form another spending bill to remove the mandate on ObamaCare. The Senate, hence staging the Government Shutdown very well, rejected the improved spending bill. The House members decided to reevaluate the amendments in the ObamaCare and requested a meeting with the Senate to resolve the potential issues.
• What can we expect on Tuesday? The Senate will convene to decide over the proposal of the meeting. However, the majority leader, Harry Reid, made it clear that a meeting would be arranged only if the bill is presented without the previous amendments.
• Last Government Shutdown in history: The last Government Shutdown took place in 1995 and lasted for 21 days.
• Government workers to be laid off: The government will keep the majority of the government workers (3.3 million) and a comparatively smaller number will be affected by the shutdown (800,000).
• Effect on Our Economy: It depends over the length of the shutdown and according to Brian Kessler, Moody Analytics, a three to four-week shutdown will cost more than $55 billion to the economy.
• How does it affect me? All the majority services will keep running such as military, social security checks, and mailing. However, it will affect people looking for a federal loan, passport, or a gun permit renewal.
• Is this the end of ObamaCare: The Government Shutdown will not affect the ObamaCare programs because the funding for the program comes from the cost cutting practices in Medicare and similar mandatory government expenses.
• Will the Government shutdown affect President’s or Senate’s Payment? Both the President as well the Senate members will continue to be paid during the Government Shutdown.
• Public opinion about the Government Shutdown: According to the CNN International Poll results, 46 percent consider it the mistake of the congressional Republicans whereas 36 percent blame the President for the shutdown. In addition to it, 13 percent of the voters blame both the parties involved in the discussion including the President.
• Why Debt Ceiling is not in the picture? Debt Ceiling is considered the next major problem because the US is on the edge of its credit card expenditure limit, $16.699 trillion. It is the duty of the Congress to raise the credit limit of the country. It is best to deal with a single problem at a time and we can expect a debate on 17 October.
• Is there anything that the Congress can agree upon? Well, the Senate and the House agreed to pay the troops to ensure the national security of the country.

With the Government Shutdown in picture, we can expect a slowdown in the finance sector and the potential homebuyers might have to wait for another month. Let us hope that the Senate and the House would lay off this shutdown as soon as possible. 

Source: CNN.com