Well it happened.

The government has officially shut down. All non-essentials are closed such as state parks, museums, and the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, to name a few. Things that are still open are most federal jobs: Social Security benefits, IRS National Security, Air Traffic Control, the Post Office,etc.  Still, about roughly 800,000 federal workers were sent home.

Why did this happen?

Just imagine Congress as an umbrella. Under that umbrella is the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is Republican (53%) and the Senate is Democratic (52%). The people of the United States elected Barack Obama as President in 2008, who is a Democrat. Fast forward to March 23rd, 2010 the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went into effect. Remember, for a bill to be passed it has to be approved by the Senate, the House of Representative and lastly by President Obama himself. So Obamacare has been approved by the Democrats and the Republicans, but not all Republicans were on that boat. Now 3 years later have realized that they cannot repeal the bill but can refuse to fund it, and like a business, Obamacare cannot function without a starting cost.

What does that means for us?

“What they have been doing slowly are passing these little measures to say okay, we’re not going to shut down the Veteran’s affairs, we’re not going to shut down this, we are going to extend the money for all of these different little pieces. So they are trying to make it so it doesn’t affect most people’s day to day lives, unless you work for the government and you were told not to come to work. That’s what they are trying to do now is pass these slow measures, these tiny little measures to make sure that the important things that affect peoples day to day aren’t being affected yet. if this goes on for a while it might be harder and harder to do that,” said Ms. Emily Holloway.

What happens now?

There is still time before everything goes downhill because Congress can pass a continuing resolution (temporary extension of the current budget) to keep America afloat. It has been 18 years since the last government shutdown in 1995 that lasted for three weeks. As long as the government isn’t shut down for too long, everything will be okay.