US Government Barely Avoids Shutdown with Short-Term Funding Measure

    Just hours before the deadline for a possible shutdown of the US government, the house passed a short-term funding measure to prevent the shutdown for now but leave the opportunity to find common ground open in the near future. Before this resolution, there had only been 15 laws and resolutions passed this year, making it the lowest in the past 50 years. The average amount of laws and resolutions passed by this time of year is 70, making this year 55 less than the yearly average. Although the shutdown was avoided, this is an alarming statistic going forward since the national funding is a simple problem that the government has to deal with every year. Another alarming part of this is how divided the house was through the entire process. Not only is there a divide between democrats and republicans, but the republicans as a group were divided in their vote, with only about 60% voting to pass this short-term funding measure. This is also a big problem because, since the government itself is already divided, having more division only causes more problems and less efficiency when the government needs to get certain things done. Monmouth University had a poll asking Americans if they would rather see a compromise before a government shutdown or to stick to their principles even if it means a shutdown occurring. The results were 64% for compromise and 31% sticking to their principles with the rest being undecided. Although this is only one poll, this shows that a majority of Americans would rather see more compromise in the government and less clashing of ideas. It seems as if the government is always in a state of argument over what is the best way to do things and sometimes it leads to situations like this where they are rushing to find a short-term compromise just to prevent the government from shutting down. This divide may become a problem in the near future, but for now they have avoided the shutdown and come to a short-term agreement.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/politics/shutdown-congress-mccarthy-republicans/index.html

By: Tyler Surin