From New York's Liberty Island to Alaska's Denali national park, the US government closed its doors as a bitter budget fight left hundreds of thousands of federal workers idle and halted all but the most critical government services for the first time in nearly two decades.
A midnight deadline to avert a shutdown passed amid congressional bickering, casting doubt on Americans' ability to get government services ranging from federally-backed home loans to supplemental food assistance for children and pregnant women.
For many employees of the federal government, Tuesday's shutdown meant no more pay as they were forced onto unpaid furloughs. For those still working, it meant delays in getting paid.
Park ranger and father-to-be Darquez Smith said he already lived paycheck-to-paycheck while putting himself through college.
"I've got a lot on my plate right now — tuition, my daughter, bills," said Smith, 23, a ranger at Dayton aviation heritage national historical park in Ohio. "I'm just confused and waiting just like everyone else."
The impact of the shutdown was mixed — immediate and far-reaching for some, annoying but minimal for others.
In Colorado, where flooding killed eight people this month, emergency funds to help rebuild homes and businesses continued to flow — but federal worker furloughs were expected to slow it down.
National Guard soldiers rebuilding washed-out roads would apparently be paid on time — along with the rest of the country's active-duty personnel — under a bill passed hours before the shutdown. Existing social security and Medicare benefits, veterans' services and mail delivery were also unaffected.
Other agencies were harder hit — nearly 3,000 Federal Aviation Administration safety inspectors were laid off, along with most of the National Transportation Safety Board's employees, including accident investigators who respond to air crashes, train collisions, pipeline explosions and other accidents.
Almost all of NASA shut down, except for mission control in Houston, and national parks closed along with the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. Even the zoo's popular pandacam went dark.
As the shutdown loomed on Monday, visitors to popular parks made their frustration with elected officials clear.
9 comments:
The US doesn't owe anything to the "global economy" and we refuse to subsidize your parasites. The US citizenry reject your demand we be bled dry, and China, lets just remind them they owe the US, from the loan given it by the US back in the 20th century, that it's communist govt tries to claim shouldn't be paid back because China "changed governments". If that's the case each time a country votes out a leader, they no longer have to pay China back.
As critically important for the US economy's (and the world's economy) the vote for the raising of the US debt ceiling may and most certainly is, the Republican party members in the House of
Representatives are stone deaf to this, and are consciously willing to plunge their country (and the global economy) into spiraling interest rates, etc.
These Republicans are more hard headed and self-righteous than the isolationist Republicans in the late 1930s and 1940-41.
If the American Southern states, in response to Lincoln's election in 1860, had not chosen to "secede" but had kept their senators and representatives in the federal Congress, and had tried blocking Lincoln's calls for financial and military steps to quell the rebels, they could hardly have done more to weaken and debilitate the US political and economic system than the current Republican ideological radicals who have the House of Representatives, and Washington generally, by the throat.
If the Japanese flotilla had been less than fully successful on December 7, 1941, the isolationists would have continued to press against war. Today's American Republicans are direct descendants of those who believed that Hitler was just a nut and the Brits probably should lose their empire and live with a German Europe that would have to contain the Soviets.
This is utter nonsense.
Such "Chicken Little-The Sky is Falling," scare tactics have been used by Barack Obama nonstop, and they are having little or no effect. It is the equivalent of his Syrian fiasco.
Of greatest concern to Americans on a daily basis is the damage that Obamacare may do to their health.
Shut down the government. It has happened, and few Americans are losing any sleep over it. The same thing may be true of the debt ceiling.
Obamacare, the signature “accomplishment” of the Obama presidency, must be—and will be—hung around Barack Obama’s neck like a dead albatross, politically.
This undergirds the fight in Washington, period. Everything else is window dressing.
See http://naegeleblog.wordpress.c... ("Barak Obama’s Welfare Socialism Sparked The US Government Shutdown, Not The American Constitution")
The reality is that is hogwash.
Enough of the government continues with what money they have to keep things going for a long, long time.
There are some minor inconveniences, but we can live with them.
Obama needs to study Reagan and Johnson, and try a bit of compromise. It is an opportunity for him to grow a bit.
As the President noted: "...“If we screw up, everybody gets screwed up,”...", we live in a global world, which means all individuals and nations are so tightly interconnected, and they so much depend on each other that even Greece was capable of unbalancing the global economy so we can predict the impact of an American default.
I would not dare to predict what is going to happen because the problems is much deeper than partisanship or political dealings.
In a global, integral human system we evolved into only mutually responsible, and complementing decision making and action can work, we have to learn to work for the benefit of the whole first, above personal benefit, since the individual is fully dependent of the optimal state of the whole.
In simple words we are all sitting on the same sinking boat.
The people holding the decisions in their hands in the US and in many other countries have been groomed on the notion of the uniqueness and importance of the individual self, the glorification of heroism, ruthless competition, succeeding at the cost of others. And it is not them who would feel the immediate shock waves of a deeper crisis either (although it would catch them later regardless, again due to the integral nature of the system), so it is difficult to see what might motivate those high and mighty "leaders" to change their stripes and start working together, taking anybody else but themselves into consideration...
QE forever more hey?
Cause if Obama had a brain, he'd boot the Federal Reserve to the curb with the Banksters in it, tell them where to stuff their dodgy money on the never, never with interest where the sun don't shine, make all debt null and void, and start printing those Greenbacks like his distant cuz Abe Lincoln, JFK ?
Cause all the Central Banks throughout the West, the IMF, the World Bank ect, are run by the same small group of Banksters, we should rid ourselves of the lot of them, and start locking them all up quite frankly, starting again debt free?!
I have no idea why Europeans are so obsessed with the US's debt.US's debt is 73% of its GDP:
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...
If I was European,I would be much more concerened about the European debt.Europe's debt had risen to 406$% of GDP in August:
http://www.benzinga.com/news/1...
Europe's combined debt is exactly 5.5!!!! times more than US's,considering that Europe's economy is smaller and much less competitive due to heavy state institutional regulations/unions.So America will be just fine,but the real basket case is Europe,really!
i assume Credit Default Swaps on US govt debt are/were cheap. i wonder how much it would cost to buy a few congressmen to block the debt ceiling increase, make the US default and then make a killing cashing in on the CDS that were bought for peanuts?. just wondering....
The IMF, (global central banker to the national central banks, in turn lender of last resort to domestic banking giants, e.g Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Santander just in the U.K alone,) Says...................
PAAAANNNNICCC!!!!!!!
'Bout time we sent Lagarde and her Banking Cabal back to the Tanning salon. On a more permanent basis!
Raise the Debt Ceiling, Madame? Every time, to infinity and beyond, are you saying? Every time the bankers need more money you whack up the debt and don't ask questions?
Do you expect everybody to be as stupid as you and jump lemming-like over the cliff with you, whenever you say raise the debt?
It's over for you bankers! Or, it !%$**?!! well should be!
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