Politics to blame for US regime shutdown
The US Government shutdown, even if for a brief period, is a failure as much of the conciliatory efforts of the Obama Administration as it is of the Republicans who decided not to rise above politics. President Barack Obama has on several occasions reached out to the Republican Party, including Speaker John Boehner, but GOP leaders believe that he and his Democrat colleagues have not done enough to forge bipartisan consensus. At the crux of this showdown is the question of how to fund the federal Government.
The Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are determined not to pass any spending measures unless President Obama agrees to defund his flagship healthcare programme, The Affordable Care Act. Better known as Obamacare, the scheme which gives health insurance to uninsured, low-income Americans, has been a bone of contention between the Democrats and the Republicans, with the latter considering it to be an unacceptable expansion of state power.
Either way, the tussle over Obamacare is nothing new. Nor is the partisan confrontation over Appropriation Bills that has become routine in recent years. Finally, members of Congress were well aware of the September 30 deadline — when the previous funding bill, passed earlier in May, expired. In other words, everybody on Capitol Hill knew that this was coming but their inability to prevent it points to collective irresponsibility.
As of now, there seems to be no resolution in sight. Mr Obama has made it clear that he will not cower before a cabal of far-Right legislators who refuse to pass a straightforward spending bill that pays for expenditure both Democrats and Republicans have already agreed upon. And so, on Tuesday, even as the federal Government went into shutdown mode, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid rejected a proposal from the House to appoint negotiators. Previously, the Senate had rebuffed Republican plans for continued funding to services such as maintaining national parks, veterans’ needs and the District of Columbia.
Now, the Republican Party has clearly put its full weight behind a small, radical group of Conservatives who are leading the fight against Obamacare, even though a majority of moderates within the party does not endorse such a hardline approach and agrees that the stance is deeply damaging the party's prospects. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Republicans have allowed the uproarious Tea Party to “hold hostage” the entire United States Government, as President Obama said on Tuesday — ironically, the first day of enrolment in the regime’s pet Obamacare project.
The situation is eerily similar to 1996 — the last time the US Government shut down in this manner — when Mr Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House took a similar stand against President Bill Clinton. Seventeen years later, it is Mr Ted Cruz, a Senator from Texas and the darling of the Tea Party, who has brought upon the avoidable crisis.The issue might worsen if Congress fails to pass the Bill that will increase the nation's borrowing limit. If that happens, the US will default on its payments for the first time ever. Needless to add, the failure will send shock waves across the world market.