It's a government shutdown, but not really. Capitol Hill is not a ghost town. More than 1.2 million employees go about work as usual. The big difference: they're not getting paid, hope to get retroactively paid, though only once compromise is reached between the Democrats and the Republicans on a budget.
The U.S. has faced 17 shutdowns since 1976. The last was in 1995-96 when it lasted three weeks. All workers, those who worked and who were furloughed, got paid. This time around, though, there are reports that the Republicans may balk at the idea of paying the 800,000 workers for work they didn't do.
Much of it also has to do with ideology: the Republicans favour a lean government; the Democrats are accused of expanding it. Most of all, the shutdown has to do with the Affordable Health Care Act, or Obamacare, which started at around the same time as the shutdown. Most conservative Republicans hate, oppose it. Obama guards it zealously, rebuts attacks, considers it his legacy, a boon for the poor, uninsured, terminally sick — an entitlement deed to immortalize him in history.
Another worry for the Republicans is that the more time they spend in a lockdown with the Democrats, the more time Obamacare will get to smooth out its glitches. Though it's open now for enrollment, the programme has faced tremendous criticism for glitches in the computerized system, along with allegations of high premiums for some consumers.
However, for most people in the country, away from Washington, D.C., life has not been affected by the shutdown. Airports are functioning normally, the postal service is delivering mail and, importantly, for a nation of immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security — which administers immigration services too — is processing applications.
The Brookings Institution has said that despite the shutdown many projects within the country are progressing. These include the expansion of Boston's Innovation District, which has added more than 5,000 new jobs in the last four years; the Building a New Chicago programme, a $7.3-billion U.S. infrastructure renewal initiative, is cheered along; California is set to expand the state's electric vehicle market; and a $25-million U.S. Link Detroit effort to access the downtown, is underway, as scheduled.
So how does the impasse over the shutdown end? What can bring things back to normal may well be the one issue most people worry about: the prospect of a debt default. Raising the debt ceiling is critical for the government to pay for social security checks and foreign creditors; to stop the dollar from tumbling, the interest rates from skyrocketing, and the country from sliding back into recession.
The government has to take care of it in the next week. Failure to do that would be disastrous, not only for the U.S. economy but for world markets. The deadline provides the perfect opportunity to end the deadlock. Both parties can come off as being seen as sacrificing their moral high ground in favour of national interest.
The stock market was not perturbed by the first few days of the shutdown, but that apparent lack of concern may not last long. The corporate world is putting tremendous pressure on Obama and the Republican leadership to negotiate, ward off the catastrophe, calm investors. The Democrats and the Republicans have a week to iron out their disgruntlement.
If they don't stop squabbling, and decide to catapult the U,S, and the world economy into depths deeper than the Grand Canyon, then they would be the most heckled and taunted lot in political history. Obama at least won't quite like that. It's unlikely to happen, though.
