warning Hi, we've moved to USCANNENBERGMEDIA.COM. Visit us there!

Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

U.S. Government Shutdown Begins

Brianna Sacks, Max Schwartz |
September 30, 2013 | 9:38 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporters

(Caricature of House Speaker John A. Boehner/Creative Commons Flickr-DonkeyHotey)
(Caricature of House Speaker John A. Boehner/Creative Commons Flickr-DonkeyHotey)
After a headache-inducing ping pong game between the House and the Senate over President Obama's signature healthcare law, lawmakers could not agree on a spending plan and let the government shutdown

Thanks to a never-ending blame game, the U.S. is now entering its first shutdown in 17 years

And after three years of back-and-forth, Congress failed to reach an agreement on how to fund the government by the deadline, midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Now the White House has ordered federal agencies to suspend a vast array of activities shortly after midnight.

The shutdown means 800,000 federal workers will show up to work Tuesday morning and receive notices of unpaid leave, known as furloughs, according to the Obama administration.

National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents will be required to serve without pay. And, the Washington Post noted, many congressional hearings — including one scheduled for Tuesday on last month’s Washington Navy Yard shootings — will be postponed.

An hour or so before the midnight deadline, the Republican-led House passed a third proposal to fund the government for a matter of weeks. Like the previous plans, the new one sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and nix health care subsides for congressional staffers.

SEE ALSO: Past Government Shutdowns: 17 And Counting

The Senate swiftly vetoed a House-passed government funding proposal late Monday, tossing the legislation back to the lower chamber and forcing the House to try another angle.

Bloomberg News reported
that Republicans said Democrats were unwilling to negotiate and Democrats said the House was trying to extort policy changes on a plan that would, at most, keep government open through Dec. 15.

All non-essential government services will stop and employees will be furloughed, such as park rangers, but essential services will continue.

Workers who perform these services,like air traffic controllers, will now receive delayed pay checks. Political appointees are exempt from furloughs and government employees who are essential to President Obama will remain on the job.

Speaking on the House floor shortly before the final vote, House Speaker John Boehner said the vote to delay the mandate was about "fairness."

"I would say to the president: This is not about me," Boehner said. "This is not about Republicans here in Congress. It's about fairness for the American people."

Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-SF) remarked that the House would have to pass the Senate's resolution to dig the country out of a stalled government. She added that a small change to the Affordable Care Act would not have have changed the trajectory of going toward a shutdown.

Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) previously said that the Senate would only vote on a bill that does not change the Affordable Care Act. That also means that the Senate would only vote on a continuing resolution, keeping the government funded at its current level, if there were no policy changes.

SEE ALSO: 11 Reasons You Won't Know Your Government Shut Down

While speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) said the resolution should go to Conference and also mentioned that we would not be where we are if the Senate would have accepted the resolution passed by the House.

Reid urged  to abandon the assault on the health-care law and pass a simple bill to keep the government open. Otherwise, Reid warned, “the responsibility for this Republican government shutdown will rest squarely on his shoulders.”

Obama said that a government shutdown would "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy.

Read all about the shutdown at the Washington Post

See more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the government shutdown.

Reach reporters Brianna Sacks here and Max Schwartz here.



 

Buzz

Craig Gillespie directed this true story about "the most daring rescue mission in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

Watch USC Annenberg Media's live State of the Union recap and analysis here.