Everything You Need to Know About the US Government Shutdown 2013

Absolutely everything you need to know about how the government shutdown will work

By Brad Plumer, Published: September 30 at 12:22 pm

A government shutdown starting Tuesday, Oct. 1, is now upon us. The House and Senate couldn't agree on a bill to fund the government, and time has run out.

The photograph is cleverly shot to make it look like the gates of the federal government are literally closing. Neat, eh? (The Washington Post)

So... it's shutdown time. Let's take a look at how this will work.

Not all government functions will simply evaporate come Oct. 1 — Social Security checks will still get mailed, and veterans' hospitals will stay open. But many federal agencies will shut their doors and send their employees home, from the Environmental Protection Agency to hundreds of national parks.

Here's a look at how a shutdown will work, which parts of the government will close, and which parts of the economy might be affected.

Wait, what? Why is the federal government on the verge of shutting down?

The fiscal crises will continue until morale improves. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). (Scott Applewhite/AP)

Short answer: There are wide swaths of the federal government that need to be funded each year in order to operate. If Congress can't agree on how to fund them, they have to close down. And, right now, Congress can't agree on how to fund them.

To get a bit more specific: Each year, the House and Senate are supposed to agree on 12 appropriations bills to fund the federal agencies and set spending priorities. Congress has become really bad at passing these bills, so in recent years they've resorted to stopgap budgets to keep the government funded (known as "continuing resolutions"). The last stopgap passed on March 28, 2013, and ends on Sept. 30.

In theory, Congress could pass another stopgap before Tuesday. But the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House are at odds over what that stopgap should look like. The House passed a funding bill over the weekend that delayed Obamacare for one year and repealed a tax on medical devices. The Senate rejected that measure. They voted a few more times and still no agreement. So... we're getting a shutdown.

Does a shutdown mean everyone who works for the federal government has to go home?

Not exactly. The laws and regulations governing shutdowns separate federal workers into "essential" and "non-essential." (Actually, the preferred term nowadays is "excepted" and "non-excepted." This was tweaked in 1995 because "non-essential" seemed a bit hurtful. But we'll keep things simple.)

The Office of Management and Budget recently ordered managers at all federal agencies to conduct reviews to see which of their employees fall into each of these two categories. If a shutdown hits, the essential workers stick around, albeit without pay. The non-essential workers have to go home after a half-day of preparing to close shop.

Which parts of government stay open?

Air traffic control stays open. (Jim Weber/AP)

There are a whole bunch of key government functions that carry on during a shutdown, including anything related to national security, public safety, or programs written into permanent law (like Social Security). Here's a partial list:

-- Any employee or office that "provides for the national security, including the conduct of foreign relations essential to the national security or the safety of life and property." That means the U.S. military will keep operating, for one. So will embassies abroad.

-- Any employee who conducts "essential activities to the extent that they protect life and property." So, for example: Air traffic control stays open. So does all emergency medical care, border patrol, federal prisons, most law enforcement, emergency and disaster assistance, overseeing the banking system, operating the power grid, and guarding federal property.

-- Agencies have to keep sending out benefits and operating programs that are written into permanent law or get multi-year funding. That means sending out Social Security checks and providing certain types of veterans' benefits. Unemployment benefits and food stamps will also continue for the time being, since their funding has been approved in earlier bills.

-- All agencies with independent sources of funding remain open, including the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Reserve.

-- Members of Congress can stick around, since their pay is written into permanent law. Congressional staffers however, will also get divided into essential and non-essential, with the latter getting furloughed. Many White House employees could also get sent home.

Do these "essential" employees who keep working get paid?

The 1.3 million or so "essential" civilian employees who stay on could well see their paychecks delayed during the shutdown, depending on the timing. They should, however, receive retroactive pay if and when Congress decides to fund the government again.

The 1.4 million active-service military members, meanwhile, will get paid no matter how long the shutdown lasts. That's because the House and Senate specifically passed a bill to guarantee active-duty military pay even when the government is closed. Obama signed it into law Monday night.

So which parts of government actually shut down?

 

Closed! Well, unless Arizona wants to pay to operate it. (Ron Watts / Corbios)

Everything else, basically. It's a fairly long list, and you can check out in detail which activities the agencies are planning to halt in these contingency plans posted by each agency. Here are a few select examples:

Health: The National Institutes of Health will stop accepting new patients for clinical research and stop answering hotline calls about medical questions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop its seasonal flu program and have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations."

Housing: The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able to provide local housing authorities with additional money for housing vouchers. The nation's 3,300 public housing authorities will also stop receiving payments, although most of these agencies have enough cash on hand to provide rental assistance through the end of October.

Immigration: The Department of Homeland Security will no longer operate its E-Verify program, which means that businesses will not be able to check on the legal immigration status of prospective employees during the shutdown.

Law enforcement: Although agencies like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency will continue their operations, the Justice Department will suspend many civil cases for as long as the government is shut down.

Parks and museums: The National Park Service will close more than 400 national parks and museums, including Yosemite National Park in California, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and the Statue of Liberty in New York. The last time this happened during the 1995-96 shutdown, some 7 million visitors were turned away. (One big exception was the south rim of the Grand Canyon, which stayed open only because Arizona agreed to pick up the tab.)

Regulatory agencies: The Environmental Protection Agency will close down almost entirely during a shutdown, save for operations around Superfund sites. Many of the Labor Department's regulatory offices will close, including the Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (The Mine Safety and Health Administration will, however, stay open.)

Financial regulators. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the vast U.S. derivatives market, will largely shut down. A few financial regulators, however, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, will remain open.

(Small parts of) Social Security: The Social Security Administration will retain enough staff to make sure the checks keep going out. But the agency won't have enough employees to do things like help recipients replace their benefit cards or schedule new hearings for disability cases.

Visas and passports: The State Department says it will keep most passport agencies and consular operations open so long as it has the funds to do so, although some activities might be interrupted. (For instance, "if a passport agency is located in a government building affected by a lapse in appropriations, the facility may become unsupported.")

During the previous shutdown in 1995-1996, around 20,000 to 30,000 applications from foreigners for visas went unprocessed each day. This time around, the State Department is planning to continue processing visas through the shutdown, since those operations are largely funded by fees collected.

Veterans: Some key benefits will continue and the VA hospitals will remained open. But many services will be disrupted. The Veterans Benefits Administration will be unable to process education and rehabilitation benefits. The Board of Veterans' Appeals will be unable to hold hearings.

What's more, if the shutdown lasts for more than two or three weeks, the Department of Veterans Affairs has said that it may not have enough money to pay disability claims and pension payments. That could affect some 3.6 million veterans.

Women, Infants, and Children: The Department of Agriculture will cut off support for the Women, Infants and Children program, which helps pregnant women and new moms buy healthy food and provides nutritional information and health care referrals. The program reaches some 9 million Americans. The USDA estimates most states have funds to continue their programs for "a week or so," but they'll "likely be unable to sustain operations for a longer period" — emergency funds may run out by the end of October.
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has a list of other possible effects of a shutdown. Funds to help states administer unemployment benefits could get disrupted, IRS tax-refund processing for certain returns would be suspended, farm loans and payments would stop, and Small Business Administration approval of business loan guarantees and direct loans would likely cease.

Would the city of Washington D.C. be affected?

D.C.'s garbage collection stops during a shutdown. (The Washington Post)

Only if the shutdown goes on longer than a few weeks. In theory, the District of Columbia is supposed to shut down all but its most essential services during a government shutdown. But Mayor Vincent Gray has said that he will label all city services "essential" and use a cash reserve fund to keep everything going for as long as possible.

Some background: The District of Columbia is the only city barred from spending funds during a federal government shutdown, save for a few select services. During the 1995-'96 shutdown, the city was only able to keep police, firefighters and EMS units on duty. Trash collection and street sweeping came to a stop until Congress finally intervened.

This time, however, the District is taking a more defiant stance. Gray has recently said that he will declare all city services "essential" and keep them running. And the city has $144 million in funds to carry out services like trash collection and street sweeping for two weeks. If the shutdown drags on longer, however, it's unclear what will happen...

How many federal employees would be affected by a government shutdown?

Half of you go home. (Jeffrey MacMillan/For The Washington Post)

The government estimates that roughly 800,000 federal workers will get sent home if the government shuts down.

That leaves about 1.3 million "essential" federal workers, 1.4 million active-duty military members, 500,000 Postal Service workers, and other employees in independently-funded agencies who will continue working.
Can you give me an agency-by-agency breakdown of the impacts?

Yes. We've been compiling a detailed list here at the Post, but here's a brief overview, showing how many employees are furloughed, and examples of who stays and who goes:

Department of Commerce: 87 percent of the agency's 46,420 employees would be sent home. (The Weather Service would keep running, for instance, but the Census Bureau would close down.)

Department of Defense: 50 percent of the 800,000 civilian employees would be sent home while all 1.4 million active-duty military members would stay on. (Environmental engineers, for instance, would get furloughed, and the agency could not sign any new defense contracts.)

Department of Energy: Thanks to multi-year funding, parts of the agency can actually operate for "a short period of time" after Sept. 30. But eventually 69 percent of the agency's 13,814 employees will be sent home. (Those in charge of nuclear materials and power grids stay. Those conducting energy research go home.)

Environmental Protection Agency: 94 percent of the 16,205 employees will be sent home. (Those protecting toxic Superfund sites stay. Pollution and pesticide regulators get sent home.)

Federal Reserve: Everyone would stay, since the central bank has an independent source of funding.
Editor's note:  The Federal Reserve is NOT part of our government; it is a privately owned bank that prints money from the air, (Isn't that called counterfeiting?) and loans it to the US.  Our tax dollars, among other sources pay these high interest loans. These are the banking Cabal that we now owe over 16 trillion "counterfeit" dollars...  This is techically impossible for the US to ever repay; we are debtor slaves, living on false credit.  The US has NO real money, or gold; the Federal Reserve took our gold from Fort Knox ,as collateral, years ago.  This corruption is completely out of control!

Department of Health and Human Services: 52 percent of 78,198 employees would be sent home. (Those running the Suicide Prevention Lifeline would stay, those in charge of investigating Medicare fraud would go home.)

Department of Homeland Security: 14 percent of the 231,117 employees would go home. (Border Patrol would stay. Operations of E-Verify would cease. The department will also suspend disaster-preparedness grants to states and localities.)

Department of Housing and Urban Development: 95 percent of the 8,709 employees would go home. (Those in charge of guaranteeing mortgages at Ginnie Mae would stay, as would those in charge of homelessness programs. Almost everything else would come to a halt.)

Department of Interior: 81 percent of the 72,562 employees would be sent home. (Wildlife law enforcement officers would stay, while the national parks would close.)

Department of Justice: 15 percent of the 114,486 employees would go home. (FBI agents, drug enforcement agents, and federal prison employees would stay. The department would continue running background checks for gun sales. Some attorneys would go home.)

Department of Labor: 82 percent of the 16,304 employees would be sent home. (Mine-safety inspectors will stay. Wage and occupational safety regulators will go home. Employees compiling economic data for the Bureau of Labor Statistics will also get furloughed.)

NASA: 97 percent of the 18,134 employees would be sent home. (Scientists working on the International Space Station will stay. Many engineers will go home.)

U.S. Postal Service: Everyone would stay, since the Postal Service is self-funded.

Social Security Administration: 29 percent of the 62,343 employees would be sent home. (Claims representatives would stay; actuaries would go home.)

Supreme Court and federal courts. Federal courts, will continue to operate for approximately two weeks with reserve funds. After that, only essential employees would continue to work, as determined by the chief judge, with the rest furloughed. (The Supreme Court will continue to operate when it opens Oct. 7, as it did in previous shutdowns.)

Department of Treasury: 80 percent of the 112,461 employees will be sent home. (Those sending out Social Security checks would stay; IRS employees overseeing audits would go home.)

Department of Transportation: 33 percent of the 55,468 employees will get sent home. (Air-traffic controllers will stay on; most airport inspections will cease.)

Department of Veterans Affairs: 4 percent of the 332,025 employees would go home. (Hospital workers will stay; some workers in charge of processing benefits will go home.)

A much, much more detailed list can be found in the agency contingency plans prepared here.

Do "non-essential employees" who get sent home ever get paid?

The big question. (AP)

That's unclear, as my colleague Lisa Rein has reported. On the first day of the shutdown, these employees do have to come to their offices to secure their files, set up auto-reply messages, and make preparations necessary to halt their programs.

The last time this happened, Congress later agreed to pay these employees retroactively when the government reopened. But that's completely up to Congress.

Is the government even prepared for a shutdown?

This is honestly the best stock art we've got to indicate the possibility of confusion and chaos. (Bigstock)

Maybe? As mentioned before, the Office of Management and Budget has asked federal agencies to develop contingency plans for a shutdown. But chaos is always possible. Back during the 1995 shutdown, the Social Security Administration initially sent home far too many workers and had to recall 50,000 of them after three days in order to carry out its legal duties.

Which parts of the economy would be most affected by a shutdown?

A few points:

-- The local economy around Washington, D.C. is expected to lose some $200 million in economic activity for each day that the government is shut down.

-- Economist Mark Zandi has estimated that a short government shutdown, which would send more than 800,000 federal workers home, could shave about 0.3 percentage points off economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2013 (though the economy would likely bounce back in the following quarter). A more extended shutdown could do even more damage.

-- Alternatively, we can look at what happened back in 1995 and 1996, the last two times the federal government actually shut down for a few weeks. In a research note earlier this month, Chris Krueger of Guggenheim Partners passed along some thoughts about the possible economic impacts of a shutdown in a few areas:

Tourism: U.S. tourist industries and airlines reportedly sustained millions of dollars in losses during the 1995 and 1996 shutdowns, in part because so many parks and museums were shutting down, turning away 7 million visitors in all.

Federal contractors: Of the $18 billion in federal contracts in the D.C. area back in 1995-1996, about one-fifth, or $3.7 billion, were put on hold during that era's shutdown. Employees of contractors were reportedly furloughed without pay.

The effects would be considerably larger today, given that the number of private contractors has swelled over the past two decades. In Fairfax County, Virginia, alone there are currently 4,100 contractors that bring in about $26 billion per year. It's still unclear exactly how many of those contracts would be affected.

Energy: The Department of Interior would temporarily stop reviewing permits for onshore oil and gas drilling as well as applications for renewable energy projects on public land. (The Department of Energy can keep processing applications for liquefied natural gas exports for the time being, though it's not clear how long that funding will last.)

Pharma and biotech: This one's harder to game out. The Food and Drug Administration didn't have to shut down in 1995 and 1996 because it was already funded. This time around, however, the FDA won't be spared, and the review process for new drugs is likely to get bogged down. The shutdown could also put a cramp on the grant process from the National Institutes of Health. "If prolonged," Krueger writes, "that could negatively impact life sciences/diagnostics companies.

Would a government shutdown stop Obamacare from happening?

(Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)

No. As Sarah Kliff has explained, the key parts of Obamacare rely on mandatory spending that isn't affected by a shutdown. "That includes the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, where uninsured people will be able to shop for coverage. The Medicaid expansion is funded with mandatory funding, as are the billions in federal tax credits to help with purchasing coverage."

That means uninsured Americans will be able to start shopping for plans when the exchanges launch Oct. 1, although there are likely to be some glitches.

How do you end a government shutdown?

Congress needs to pass a bill (or bills) to fund the government, and the White House has to sign them. They can do this at any time. Or they can sit at home and keep the government closed. Nothing requires them to do anything. It depends what sort of political pressure they're facing.

How often has the government shut down before?

Since 1976, there have been 17 different government shutdowns. The longest came in 1995-'96 and lasted 21 days, as Bill Clinton wrangled with congressional Republicans over budget matters.

But there were also six shutdowns in the 1970s, all lasting longer than eight days, and there was even a one-day shutdown in 1982 when Congress couldn't agree on funding for Nicaraguan Contras.

Is a government shutdown the same thing as breaching the debt ceiling?

Nope! Different type of crisis. In a government shutdown, the federal government is not allowed to make any new spending commitments (save for all the exceptions noted above).

By contrast, if we hit the debt-ceiling then the Treasury Department won't be able to borrow money to pay for spending that Congress has already approved. In that case, either Congress will have to lift the debt ceiling or the federal government will have to default on some of its bills, possibly including payments to bondholders or Social Security payouts. That could trigger big disruptions in the financial markets — or a long-term rise in borrowing costs.

The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that we're on pace to breach the debt ceiling sometime between Oct. 18 and Nov. 5. So if a government shutdown isn't thrilling enough for you, good news: There's another fiscal crisis just around the corner.

Further reading on the shutdown: 

--VIDEO: Decoding the jargon of a government shutdown.

--A detailed look at how each agency would be affected by a shutdown.

--Don’t forget what the shutdown is really about.

--The nine most painful impacts of a government shutdown.

--Congress still gets paid during a shutdown, while staffers don’t. Here’s why.

--Federal workers who check their e-mail during a shutdown will be breaking the law

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Obama Blames Republicans for Partial Shutdown

US president says "ideological crusade" being carried out against healthcare law, as many government services shut down.

US President Barack Obama has blamed Republicans in the House of Representatives for a partial government shutdown, saying they are carrying out an "ideological crusade" against his healthcare law.

Obama was speaking at the White House on Tuesday, the first day of the partial government shutdown of non-essential services, triggered by the failure of Congress to pass a budget law.

The president said Republicans, who have refused to pass the funding bill unless reforms are made to his landmark healthcare law, should not be able to hold the entire economy "hostage".

He urged them to reopen the government quickly and allow furloughed federal employees to go back to work.

The government shut down because Congress did not pass a funding bill ahead of Monday's midnight deadline for the end of the 2013 fiscal year.

The partial shutdown, the first such event in 17 years, meant that 800,000 "non-essential" workers were forced to remain home on Tuesday.

The Republican-controlled House has passed two spending bills in recent days, both of which have been rejected by the Democrat-led Senate. House Republicans asked for a conference on the budget with the Senate, but the upper house of Congress killed that proposal when it met on Tuesday morning.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said that he would not negotiate as long as the House linked the budget law to the healthcare law.

Tuesday's Senate vote was the fourth time since this political battle began that the body had rejected a House Republican bill or proposal.

Shutdown effects

Some critical parts of the government, including the military and air traffic control, will remain open. The shutdown will, however, keep hundreds of thousands of federal workers at home and unpaid.

It could affect government services including park management, food assistance for children and pregnant women and federal home loan programmes.  Federal agencies, such as NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others, were also affected.

In an earlier statement, Obama spoke bluntly about House Republicans: "You don't get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you're supposed to be doing anyway, or just because there's a law there that you don't like."

Speaking of the healthcare law that undergoes a major expansion on Tuesday, he said: "That funding is already in place. You can't shut it down."

Signs of dissent

The Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, responded a few hours later on the House floor. "The American people don't want a shutdown and neither do I," he said. However, he added, the new healthcare law was having "a devastating impact ... something has to be done".

House Republicans have sought a year's delay in a requirement in the healthcare law for individuals to buy coverage.

However, in recent days several Republican senators and House members have said they would be willing to vote for straightforward legislation with no healthcare-related provisions.

The last shutdown, in the winter of 1995-96, severely damaged Republican election prospects.
Stock markets around the world reacted resiliently to the shutdown on Tuesday morning, with analysts saying significant damage to the US economy was unlikely unless the shutdown lasted more than a few days.

After falling the day before the US shutdown deadline, European stocks mostly recovered. In Asia, stocks were mixed, while Wall Street was expected to open slightly higher.

Source

Euro MPs Nominate Edward Snowden for Human Rights Award

Snowden has been living in Russia since he broke news of US spying [AP]

The US whistleblower Edward Snowden has made the shortlist for a European human rights award after being nominated by a bloc of European Union politicians.

The former CIA employee was nominated on Monday for the Sakharov Prize by the Green group in the European Parliament for leaking details of secret US surveillance programmes.

His nomination was in recognition of his “enormous service” to human rights and to the European citizens, the Green group said.
Addressing parliament in a written statement he said: "The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time."

The former CIA/NSA employee has been living in Russia since disclosing global surveillance programmes that monitored foreign diplomats and hacked civilian computer networks.

Prestigious award

The Sakharov Prize, awarded annually for freedom of thought, is given by the European Parliament each year since 1988 to commemorate Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. Previous recipients include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Among the nominees for this year is Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban last year for demanding education for girls.

The winner of the prize will be announced on October 10 with the prize worth approximately $65,000 being awarded in Strasbourg on November 20.

Source:

Reuters

These Are Not the Normal Activities of a Government Planning for Peace and Stability

Something is amiss. Most Americans know this – they can feel it deep down inside – even if they don’t know what it is, things just don’t seem right.

The signs are everywhere. The headlines are true.

The global economy is faltering. The United States has become wholly dependent on the Federal Reserve injecting nearly $1 trillion dollars a year into financial markets and the U.S. government just to stay afloat. Over one hundred million Americans are living in poverty and dependent on government disbursements just to make ends meet.

Across the world the cold war between the U.S., Russia, China and regions in the middle east is heating up. Just last month our President brought the entire planet to the very brink of what could have easily devolved into conflict on such a scale that even global leaders were suggesting that World War III was imminent. War mongers in Congress were so adamant about launching a middle east strike on Syria that one of them even suggested a nuclear weapon could be detonated over South Carolina if we failed to act.

On the domestic front, homeland security preparations and exercises have accelerated to the point that the government has now said that a cyber attack capable of taking down the national power grid is a 100% certainty. They’ve stocked tens of millions of emergency ration and supplies, and nearly 2 billion rounds of ammunition. They’ve trained for the last decade for scenarios that include economic collapse and the subsequent civil unrest that would follow.

These are not the normal activities of a government planning for peace and stability.

In the following interview with SGT Report, Dave Hodges of The Common Sense Show connects the dots in a way that will leave most of our countrymen stunned.

There’s a plan in place and it involves political leaders, business conglomerates, the military industrial complex and a massive global agenda. And one day soon that plan will be executed. Once that day comes, look out, because everything you’ve ever imagined going wrong will, and the world will delve into one of its darkest periods in history.

“Anything is possible. I wouldn’t put anything past them,” notes Sean of SGT Report.
Indeed.

Pay attention to this amazingly insightful interview, because it details how the elite think, what their priorities are, and how far they are willing to go to accomplish their goals.

What are they preparing for?

Look at what’s going on today with regard to DHS and FEMA. There are no less than eight disaster drills planned between the period of time which started September 25th and goes through November 13th. 

I suspect within one of these drills we will see a false flag drill, because it follows the old familiar pattern of having a drill and then having the event within the drill – 9/11, the 7/7 bombings, the Boston Marathon bombing, and so forth. 

So, this is what I think is coming guys. I don’t think we’re going to wait long to see some dramatic shifts in our country.

 

There is a collapse that is coming.

The banks have been preparing for it for over a year now, and I go back to last year when the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that when you deposit your money in the bank that money belongs to the bank and they may do with it what they will.

An then you move forward and start looking at the Bank of International Settlements [the central bank of central banks] in which they most recently told the central banks around the world basically to stop loaning. They want to cut the amount of money in circulation dramatically.

If I was running a bank, and I knew a collapse was coming, I would want to gather all my nuts for the winter and store them, and I wouldn’t want them outside of my confines.

Well, that’s exactly what the banks are doing… The banks are gearing up for the collapse.
…
I really expect that, if this grid drill doesn’t attract more attention than it is currently receiving, this will be the false flag. But we have other possibilities.

In October… there’s a cyber attack drill involving 1000 banks… Well there’s another opportunity to take it down.

But my favorite here would be the Grid-X drill… This has to do with Syria and Iran. The globalists that support the Petro dollar need to make Iran stop selling their oil for gold to China, Russia and India; and now Brazil is threatening to get into this game, too.

The Petro dollar will crash. Now, the globalists are going to crash the Petro dollar and the Federal Reserve note at some point. But they want to do it at a time of their choosing.

Obama is under extreme pressure to get this war started in the middle east. This is why I believe in the month of May the globalist corporate controlled central media essentially ran five Watergate type scandals on Obama in a ten day period. That was orchestrated to get him off dead-center. He wasn’t able to get the job done.

So, they may be saying, maybe we can’t save the Petro dollar, so let’s go ahead and collapse the whole thing.

Let’s go forward to the Grid-X drill and see how this ties in… If you take down the power, by the third day people are going to be rioting in the streets, there going to have no food, and it’s going to be absolute and total chaos.

Within that false flag event could lie another one.
The globalists may have made the decision to collapse the economy at that point by taking down the banks.

And who’s going to be caring about how many digits are on your computerized bank account on the third day of a black out if you do not have food on the table?

This… is a likely possibility if Obama is not able to break the quagmire and attack Syria.
…
The difference with what will happen with the grid if they turn this into a false flag event and these isolated events like Hurricane Sandy, is the fact that there was still outside help being rendered.

If we have the entire grid go down across the country the cavalry will not come, there’s no 9-1-1- to call, the police will not respond, people are totally on their own.

As noted in the interview by SGT Report:

All of these things that we’re seeing in Cyprus, in Panama, in Greece… These things are essentially the model for what I think will eventually come here to our own shores. That’s why we want to rattle the cage and we want to inform as many people as we can about tangible assets, hard assets.

Hard assets. Those are the only things you’ll be able to depend on if the grid goes down, or if your bank collapses, or if the government rolls tanks down your neighborhood street.

You’ll need stores of food and access to water. You’ll need firearms and ammunition to defend yourself. You’ll need gold and silver as a medium of exchange. And you’ll need barterable goods and trade skills.
If you haven’t done so already, prepare a contingency plan for a long-term event that essentially destroys the life you have come to know in the consumer society.

How likely is it that such events will come to pass? Every century we’ve seen widespread war, famine, and destruction. Thus, the odds are pretty good we’re going to see it again in our lifetimes.

Give yourself and your family a fighting chance and prepare for the worst.

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BREAKING NEWS: The USA Government Has Officially Shut Down

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.

Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on US budget 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.

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