Tuesday, 1 October 2013

US government begins shutdown amid budget row

The US government has begun a partial shutdown after the two houses of Congress failed to agree a budget.

More than 800,000 federal employees face unpaid leave with no guarantee of back pay once the deadlock is over.

It is the first partial shutdown in 17 years.

This is refusal to co-operate on a grand scale is quite hard to fathom, and as an outsider looking in appears petty and childish.

You’d think with what was at stake both the Republicans and Democrats would have tried more to reach an agreement, although this has come close to happening before, but that time they just bumped the deadline back, which they couldn’t even be bothered to do here.

This is almost as comical as the sequester when there was a bill that both sides agreed on that contained spending cuts so severe it would force them into co-operating and guess what happened that time . . . . .

The US government seems to have spent the last few years in self-destruct mode, and it makes you think what would it take to make them co-operate?   


Whatever it maybe they need to figure it out soon because they’re just making themselves look more and more reckless. 

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