How can it be that government employees cannot be paid next week because of the budget debate in Congress.
This seems rather small minded to a non US citizen like myself.
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Example: The Irish budget for 2014 must be presented on the 15. October of 2013. Then the Irish dail will debate it and sort it out – they have 6 weeks.
Germanyis going even further by approving a budget for 2014 in June 2013.*
So why can the US not get its act together with the budget and has to (what seems to me) wing the budget and has to bring the US Government to a halt.
The budget is on several cycles, primarily 2-years, (more complicated than that) but the checkbook part of the budget is dependent on actually having money in it to pay the bills. The checkbook ran out, certain laws allow some things to run on credit, such as meat inspections and the military.
The fiscal year starts on October 1 (why that date, I don’t know). The budget for that year must be finished before then. Ideally, it would be finished months before then, but politicians always procrastinate. If it isn’t finished before then, then there’s no budget, and nobody gets paid until there is. Weeks don’t have anything to do with it.
It’s funded on an annual basis like most other governments, with the fiscal year starting October 1. And the President is required to submit a budget proposal to Congress by the 1st Monday of February. That gives Congress almost 8 months to revise & compromise as needed, and pass the budget that the President would accept & sign.
As I see it, differences between US and some other countries are:
As explained in this article: “… for that budget resolution to take effect, it must have either the cooperation of the house, or at least 60 votes in the Senate.” There are 100 Senators total, so if one party has a majority in the Senate but with fewer than 60 members, and the other party controls the House, there can be a stalemate.
The US is a 2-party system. There are a handful of independents, but not enough to affect the balance of power. So there is no concept of a “coalition”. If the two parties are strongly opposed on a particular issue, there is no third party which can switch sides to pass the budget.
In fact, because of these difficulties, the US Congress has not passed a budget in several years. It’s been funded through a series of Continuing Resolutions, which is intended as a short-term stopgap measure in case the budget is not passed in time. This is what they were trying to pass yesterday, but even that didn’t happen this time.
It might help to remember that in the US, the States run almost all of people’s daily interactions with the Government, while the Federal role is a bit more abstract.
Roads? State. Schools? State. Transit? State. Medical plans? State, with a few exceptions. Benefits like food stamps? States, with a few exceptions. Of course the military (including their benefits programs), the IRS (tax collection agency) and the Postal Service are Federal.
So shutting down the US Federal Government isn’t really that huge of an emergency.
This isn’t right. The issue isn’t lack of money, the issue is lack of funding authority from Congress. The money is there, but Obama requires Congressional authority to spend it. They’re currently withholding that authority, so the money can’t be spent. Things like the military and SS aren’t running on credit (anymore then they usually do, anyways), they’re running either because Congress has passed laws either authorizing spending on them (the military) or because the laws funding them don’t require yearly re-authorization (SS).
In a few weeks we’ll hit the debt ceiling, which really will be an issue of not enough money. But that’s not the case with the current debacle.
Although the Postal Service is a federal agency, it’s self-financing via stamps, so it doesn’t shut down.
And, yes Doughbag, it is crazy to run a country this way, but at this point we have one legislative house controlled by one party and the other (and the Presidency) by the other, and they’re playing chicken, hoping the other side will cave. So far, no one’s moving. Eventually someone (or both) will, probably due to growing public outrage.
Also, even though the “government” is shut down, the “mandatory spending” continues to get funded because it doesn’t require authorization from Congress. That includes things like social security and welfare payments. And “essential” services continue to get funded as well, like airport security, passport services, etc.
You also need to understand that a many of the newer Republican members of Congress were elected as part of the Tea Party movement. They aren’t traditional Conservatives, they lean more towards libertarianism and are against most forms of taxes and government spending. Which means the threat of a government shutdown wasn’t a very strong incentive for them to make compromises.
Does the shutdown actually extend the estimate for hitting the debt ceiling? Has anyone laid out what percentage of money is going unspent (as opposed to what percentage of workers are going idle)?
Well, if you call 800,000 workers being furloughed “not that huge of an emergency,” sure. Goldman Sachs says a three-week shutdown would reduce quarterly GDP by 0.9%. Source (Come to think of it, that number helps me guess a little at what portion of actual spending is being curtailed.)
Doughbag, three more important things to keep in mind about the shutdown:
Most spending is authorized in other ways like Simplicio said, so, people are still getting their Social Security checks and so forth; if the federal government has existing obligations, it’s paying them out. As far as spending that is authorized in the annual budget, the US has gotten pretty adept at shutting down, and each agency has a contingency plan for who to send home. Services “essential” to immediate public safety, such as agricultural inspections, are allowed by law to continue. Those workers are working unpaid now and will get back-pay when a budget is passed. Of course the effectiveness of services is hampered if only a skeleton crew is allowed to remain. Agencies that don’t receive taxpayer appropriations at all, like the US Postal Service (self-funded by user fees), continue to operate.
Most daily interactions are with the individual states, yes, but a large portion of the states’ funding comes from grants from the federal government. If a shutdown lasted several months eventually the states would run out of money to do most of the things Blakeyrat mentioned.
Well I guess everybody’s “emergency” threshold is different, but I don’t consider less than 1 percent of the GDP an emergency, especially since it’ll be resolved next week anyway.
Right; I should have mentioned that.
In any case, whenever discussing things like this outside the US, I find most of the confusion is due to a misunderstanding of the US’ political structure and how much power the States hold. In a country with a super-strong Federal government, a shutdown like this would be a huge disaster, but in the US it’s not that big a deal. (And has happened a dozen times in the past.) Politicians know that, and so they use it as a bargaining chip.
You make it sound like it’s a <1% drop in the GDP just during the shutdown. The report actually says the GDP for the entire quarter (3 months) will drop by <1% as a result of a 3-week shutdown.
If you were planning to go the US in 2 1/2 weeks (as I am) and faced a 3 hour delay at the border instead of the usual 45 minutes, you might think it an emergency. I will simply cancel the talk I am expected to give.
Partly because a significant chunk of the leadership of this country doesn’t think it is a mess. There are some in Congress for whom a shutdown isn’t just something to threaten as a means to some other goal, but a goal in itself.
I think the poster meant he edited because what he had originally written belonge in GD/The Pit, not that the OP should have gone there.
Regards the OP, I think it’s just another undesirable side-effect of having a workable democracy. Sure, the rules could be changed to avoid it, but that would drastically change the balance of power. It’s similar to the UK in that on some issues, the government can be over-ruled by a vote in parliament (especially in a coalition government). It’s unfortunate that the current situation in the US has huge implications for the world economy, and there are a number of people involved who would rather see that happen than compromise their beliefs.
Please note I have very little knowledge of the US political system - this is how it appears to this Brit.