The U.S. has a president who claims to be a great dealmaker, yet our government has shut down because it couldn’t make one. Donald Trump and Republicans cannot run a country if they are not capable of compromise.
The U.S. federal government shut down on Oct. 1 because lawmakers failed to resolve a budget dispute, because they couldn’t agree to pass a bill funding government services into October and beyond.
The president and the legislature must agree before spending plans can become law.
Currently, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, they were short of the 60 votes needed to pass the spending bill, and Democrats did not budge.
The Democrats proposed a bill that would have reversed Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and extended health care subsidies, making health insurance cheaper.
The lack of agreement prompted the government shutdown.
However, healthcare should be a top priority for our lawmakers as it affects millions of people. The Affordable Care Act subsidies will expire at the end of the year, and Democrats wanted to extend them.
“The longer Congress waits to extend them, the more damage and chaos there will be in the meantime,” Larry Levitt, a health care policy expert at Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, said.
Democrats do not want more spending cuts to government health agencies because it limits access to resources. The elderly, disabled and low-income populations use these government healthcare programs because they are accessible, and sometimes, it is their only option.
The ignorance of the GOP has led to the third government shutdown under Trump’s presidency. Two shutdowns occurred during his first term, one of them lasting 35 days, the longest in history.
It seems like a pattern has taken place where a lack of negotiation from Trump and the Republicans ends in a complete government halt – something that is extremely concerning for America.
“We want to sit down and negotiate,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference after the Senate voted Sept. 30. “But the Republicans can’t do it in their partisan way, where they just say it’s our way or the highway.”
If our leadership cannot handle civil dialogue about issues that have enormous impacts on its citizens, then we should not have to listen to their unreasonable demands.
Now, many people will suffer the effects. Federal workers deemed non-essential will be put on temporary unpaid leave, and those still employed will not be paid until the government reopens. Potentially four million federal employees will not receive a paycheck.
Military personnel will also continue their roles without compensation until a funding deal is reached.
The Department of Health and Human Services, home to agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to furlough many workers, impacting ongoing research projects.
The president and Congress must come to an agreement on passing new spending legislation for the government to reopen, so it is hard to say how long the shutdown will last.
The U.S. is stepping farther and farther away each day from the democracy it is supposed to demonstrate. This shutdown is more than just our higher-up politicians disagreeing. It emphasizes the dysfunctionality of our leadership and questions the authority of our president.
The absence of civic discourse in our government is detrimental to America’s future and should no longer be tolerated.
This story was written by Rachel Lopera. She can be reached at [email protected].
