US govt shuts down for 1st time in 17 years as budget talks fail.
The White House budget director has ordered federal agencies to begin closing down after the Senate and the House of Representatives failed to reach an agreement on a budget plan to avert a government shutdown.
"Agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director Of the White House Office of Management and Budget in a memo, said as reported by AFP
The US federal government is to partially shut down after the Congress failed to fund its work amid a Republican drive to defund the Obamacare healthcare program. President Obama addressed to US troops to boost their confidence amid the crisis.
The Congress left the government without funding as competing spending measures bounced back and forth between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Democratic-led Senate late into Monday night.
The partial shutdown will leave some essential government functions, including national security, intact. It’s not clear how long the situation will continue, with lawmakers expected to take a further vote in a matter of hours.
If the shutdown persists, it will affect an estimated 800,000 of public workers, who will be forced into unpaid leave as the government would be unable to fund their employment. National parks and most federal offices are closed, as is almost all of NASA, except for Mission Control in Houston. The shutdown also affects the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo, going as far as shutting off the zoo’s popular ‘panda cam’.
The crisis would initially cost the US economy at least $300 million a day in lost economic output, says Bloomberg citing IHS Inc., a Massachusetts-based economic forecast company.
President Barack Obama assumed his role as commander-in-chef to address US troops around the world. He said the Congress had failed American soldiers in causing the government shutdown. He pledged that the White House will do everything possible to keep those troops currently on active duty to receive all they need in order to perform that duty.
The partial shutdown on Tuesday is the first for the US government in 17 years. It comes after Congress missed the Monday midnight deadline for passing a federal budget.
Republicans were demanding a one-year delay in making millions of people buy health insurance under the Obama administration’s 2010 healthcare law as a condition for keeping the government funded. The Senate twice rejected the proposed provisions, while Obama said he would veto the House-backed legislation.
The Congress deadlock has driven the legislature’s approval rating down to a record low 10 percent, according to a new CNN/ORC International Poll. President Obama’s approval is down to 44 percent.
