Both sides of the United States Congress yesterday failed to reach consensus on the shape of a measure to pass a federal budget, thus triggering the continuation of a five-year-long government shutdown that has rendered federal authorities unable to deliver meaningful services and socioeconomic safeguards it was never providing anyway.
A feeling of dread swept across the nation at midnight last night as Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate failed to reach an agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the government, thereby allowing everything to carry on much exactly as it had before.
34-year-old Jeffrey Moore, who is now without health insurance as a result of the shutdown – but also due to the more general lack of federal provisions for individuals with preexisting conditions – said that the intransigence in Washington, D.C. angered him, and that as a result of this latest debacle, he would have to go on “exactly as I have for the previous 34 years of my life.”
President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments this morning in an indignant speech from the rose garden.
“Congress has, once again, failed to act on its obligations,” declared Obama, reading from speech notes that were written two years ago. “Because of the stubbornness of a very few, this – the United States Federal Government – is now a government that will not function, a government that will not be unable to provide its people with adequate health insurance, that will only be able to protect itself from threats abroad, and not threats born in the minds of those here at home.”
Obama warned representatives and senators that if they did not pass a resolution to re-open the government soon, then things will “not change at all” and everything would “be exactly as you’ve always remembered it.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today blamed Republicans in the House for the continuation of the shutdown, noting that Democrats had not once done this while their opponents held the balance of power, and had only threatened to do so “many times.”
A Gallop public opinion poll seemed to indicate that a majority of Americans agreed with that view; 58% blaming the Republican Party for the five-year lack of government functionality, while the other 42% expressed a crippling fear of formalwear.
While both sides are giving little ground in public, behind the scenes some say there is renewed hope for an agreement to re-open the government, after Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham drafted a bipartisan bill that would contain a budget compromise, raise the debt limit and legalise marijuana and prostitution “for Congress only.”