THE government of the US has gotten one problem off the table – picking a new house speaker. However, it has still yet to provide a solution to another problem, and that is to avoid another government shutdown.
3 weeks after Kevin McCarthy was ousted as the then United States’ House Speaker, Mike Johnson–a representative from the state of Louisiana–was nominated as the successor in a secret ballot vote on the 25th of October, 2023.
But before this happened, the Senate passed a House bill to delay a government shutdown for the next month and a half beyond the start of the federal budget year.
Under the United States Constitution article 1, section 9, says, “no money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law”. This means Congress cannot spend money that has not been authorized by law, and the deadline every year for the U.S. government to do so falls on the 1st of October.
“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” from Excerpt from U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9:
It can be noted that amid confrontations and calls for lower spending, President Joe Biden is pushing for $106 billion in new spending to aid Israel and Ukraine and beef up enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now what exactly is a government shutdown?
A government shutdown happens when non-essential U.S. government offices can no longer remain open due to a lack of funding.
Lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 different spending bills to fund agencies across the government, but the process is time-consuming. They often resort to passing a temporary extension, called a continuing resolution or ‘CR’, also known as a stopgap spending bill, to allow the government to keep operating.
Recently, the House and Senate averted a government shutdown by approving a temporary funding bill keeping federal agencies open until November 17th.
However, if by November 17th, U.S. lawmakers still fail to come to an agreement in producing a new appropriations bill, then the federal government would enter into a stoppage. There are fears that a shutdown this time could last weeks. This can trigger painful economic consequences.
The U.S. government has shut down ten times over the past 40 years and so, and no other country shuts down its government in the same way the U.S. does.
But the question now is, what will the U.S. government do in order to stop/prevent/avert this from happening again? Could the lawmakers come to an agreement under the leadership of the newly installed house speaker before the deadline? That is the big question over the next few days.
