Government Resumes From Pointless Shutdown
ANGELA YANG
Staff Writer
On Oct. 1, 2013, the federal government entered a shutdown due to failure to approve a budget plan for the 2014 fiscal year. A “funding gap” was the result of Congress’ inability to reach a solution for the budget plan: the Republican-led House of Representatives proposed defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, but was challenged by the Democratic-led Senate, which is in favor of funding Obamacare. As a result of this inability to compromise, the government shut down for 16 days until Oct. 17, when the debt ceiling was suspended to Feb. 7, 2014 by President Barack Obama.
Though it is now over, the government shutdown left many programs that provide basic necessities to those with low incomes in a panic. Government programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Food Stamps or SNAP, were only funded until the end of October, which caused many to realize that if the government shutdown went past the end of October, there would be no funding to assist low-income households. These programs exist as a way to help unfortunate Americans survive with basic essentials and, in many cases, provide for their families; therefore, they are programs that should always be far from being in danger of funding cuts. For example, around 47 million Americans are on the Food Stamps program, nearly half of whom are children or teenagers, meaning that the government nearly risked the well-being of millions of minors. Yet the government shutdown caused a completely unnecessary panic, given that the end result was not so much a “bipartisan negotiation,” as Speaker of the House John Boehner calls it, but rather a cornering tactic.
What Boehner does not seem to realize is that the House essentially called for Obamacare to be defunded, which is hardly a compromise between the two political parties. His main reasons for not wanting to fund Obamacare were that it would “raise taxes again on the American people and undo the spending caps […] without replacing them with better spending cuts.” However, the move to raise taxes and fund Obamacare has been supported by many of the American people, as found in a study conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Furthermore, Obamacare is a utilitarian move for our country, meaning that it is practical for the majority of people in a society. By promoting affordable health care, American suffering can be minimized. Ultimately, the happiness and well-being of the American people should be the first priority when it comes to the government deciding what to do about America’s future. Though Boehner’s reasoning has truth, the benefits of Obamacare outweigh what will have to change for it to take action.
The House’s facade of a compromise was merely a ploy made in an attempt to repeal or at least lessen the effects of Obamacare. A group of mature men and women literally shut the government down, leaving many government workers out of jobs and low-income households to fend for themselves just because they wanted to repeal Obamacare and deny many Americans of affordable healthcare.
Despite this, Obamacare is funded by spending what was authorized prior to the lift of the shutdown, meaning that the changes made to the debt ceiling in the Continuing Appropriations Act do not affect it. Essentially, the shutdown can be deemed pointless.