No worries. I’d originally written an argumentative response to Blakeyrat’s assertion that the shutdown doesn’t constitute an emergency then decided it was a question best suited for GD.
The mess isn’t being fixed because a budget or continuing resolution has to come from the House. The activities of the House are firmly controlled by the Republican majority there, but currently there’s some infighting amongst the GOP about using the shutdown strategy to delay Obamacare. Sen McCain (R-AZ) has openly rebuked any hopes of delaying implementation and supposedly about 100 of the 232 House Republicans would vote for a “clean” continuing resolution (a monthly budget with no-strings-attached about ACA) if the Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH), would let one come to a vote.
If Boehner lets a clean resolution come to a vote he’ll lose the support of the more reactionary wing of his party (the other ~132 of 232 House Republicans) and they may try to remove him from being the Speaker. By all accounts Boehner very much loves his position even for its own sake and not just for power’s sake.
I live in the US, but one thing I believe folks in the rest of the world tend to forget is the 2 houses of the US congress and an independent President. There are more opportunities here for conflict. We call it “checks and balances” and treat it as a good thing. Both houses have equal power, and in financial matters the House has more than equal power. The US tends to get tied up like this more than most countries because we have to have 1 law that passes 2 houses. As I understand it, in a Parliamentary system like Britain (for instance), once the majority in Parliament gets behind a bill, there isn’t much that can stop it. Here, that is 1/3 of the way toward passage.
The fix for the situation is to change it so that they the budget is late, the politicians themselves DONT GET PAID. They won’t be late with the budget ever again.
While the OP was perfectly acceptable for GQ, this thread keeps drifting towards GD territory. I think it’s been in GQ long enough for the factual aspects of the topic to be answered, and the thread will probably do a lot better in GD from here on out.
7 of 17 government shutdowns started on October 1 because of a failure to pass a budget.
11 of them started in October after failing to pass a budget after a short CR period.
They all started in the third quarter.
Only one of them lasted past Christmas.
Several of the shutdowns were over funding of abortion (some of them while the entire government was controlled by the Democrats, when there used to be more pro-life Democrats).