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The United States government is, once again, on course to shut down.
In just a few hours, when the clock strikes a minute past midnight, the state will likely be unable to pay its bills.
What happens?
It means all non-essential federal services are frozen. Government, military, waster disposal and air traffic control staff are unlikely to be paid. Federal agencies, national parks, federal courts, museums and a plethora of state bodies will be hit.
They simply won’t have the funding to have meet their wage and other bills.
Lawmakers, however, will continue to be paid, thanks to provision in the US constitution.
Why is this happening?
Congress, encompassing the US Senate and House of Representatives, have yet to approve discretionary spending, a necessity for the new US financial year, which starts on 1 October.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has not succeeded at getting hard right wing Republicans to agree a deal. If he pushes too hard, or gets a bill passed that the right flank of his party don’t like, he risks losing his job.
Mr McCarthy’s job is predicated on not upsetting that far right cohort. In order to secure his job as speaker he agreed that any House of Representatives member could call for a vote to oust him.
Read more
Joe Biden impeachment process: Why are Republicans pursuing it, what evidence do they have, what happens next?
In a way he’s backed himself in to a corner, promising something he couldn’t deliver: to return federal spending to pre-COVID levels. Many Republicans loath the trillions spent on health measures and economic stimulus.
While he secured a deal to lift the debt ceiling with President Joe Biden back in May to avert the US being unable to meet debt repayments, this is a different situation.
There aren’t the same catastrophic economic consequences hanging over a government shutdown and so there’s less of a threat to Mr McCarthy.
Had the US defaulted it would have been first time in the country’s history and…
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