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Why the US government is always shutting down - YouTube
Channel: Vox
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When a trash can gets full andÂ
thereâs a government shutdown,
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people donât stop throwing stuff on top of it.
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But I did manage to pick up a coupleÂ
truckloads of trash before I was told:
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âDonât do it anymore.â
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People were not even able to volunteerÂ
during the government shutdown.
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"Stop the shutdown,
stop the shutdown!"
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The US is the only country in the world where
the government can actually shut down.
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And the threat looms nearly every year.
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"Seven days until shut downâ"
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"Four daysâ"
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"T-minus six daysâ"
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"Five daysâ"
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"Government shutdown at midnight tonight."
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I just feel my gut in myÂ
chest - like, ugh, not again.
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So, why does the US even shut down?
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And what happens when it does?
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âYou travel 3,500 miles to AmericaÂ
and find that they shut down!â
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Every government in the worldÂ
has to do the same thing:
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decide how to spend the countryâs money.
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In the US, they do that by passing spending bills,
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called appropriations bills,
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that give these federal agencies their budgets.
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It happens every year â or every fiscal year.
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Japan is April 1st.
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In Kenya, it's July 1st.
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In the US, itâs October 1st.
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And if the government misses that deadline...
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The budget wasn't passed.
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We have no money.
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And then, "Oh, you have to come to work anyway."
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Just not getting paid.
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We did get back pay, but, still,Â
you have to wait for that.
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The saddest thing Iâve ever seen was seeingÂ
all these hard working people in a line Â
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for their food bank.
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Itâs the conversation at theÂ
dinner table every single night.
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âWell, Dad, do you know whenÂ
youâre gonna get paid again?"
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No. I donât.
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Itâs the way the US governmentÂ
was set up. Kind of.
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The answer to why we have governmentÂ
shutdowns actually starts in the Constitution.
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âNo money shall be drawn from the Treasury, butÂ
in consequence of appropriations made by law.â
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And so what that really means
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is that before any federal moneyÂ
can be spent, there has to be
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an actual appropriations law allowing it.
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But that can be interpreted in different ways
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and it has changed over time.
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Back in the 1800âs there were no shutdowns.
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But there were other problems.
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Agencies would routinelyÂ
blow through their budgets
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then keep spending
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and would come back to Congress and ask for more.
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So Congress passed the Antideficiency Act.
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It tells federal officials that they really,Â
really can't spend money without an appropriation.
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But that didnât stop the government from missingÂ
their deadline, and creating long gaps in funding.
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As recently as the 1970s, there wereÂ
plenty of these funding gaps. And yet...
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The agency sort of pretty much just kept going.
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It couldn't possibly be thatÂ
Congress wanted them to shut down
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if there was no budget bill passed on time, right?
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But what happened was in the early 1980s, Â
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the attorney general issued two opinionsÂ
that tightened up this interpretation.
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The opinions basically said
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no seriously, unless CongressÂ
has passed an appropriations bill
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agencies canât spend any money.
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Including to employ theÂ
services of their employees.
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Even though there technically isÂ
money, we have no access to it.
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And since then, the US hasÂ
shutdown-shutdown many times.
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1996 was the first big one, for three weeks.
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And 2019 was the longest in history, so far.
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I actually got to work and they was like,
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âWeâre all furloughed.
They shut the building down.â
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I was like, âOh, the doorsÂ
are not opening right now?â
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They were like, âNo.
It's shut down completely.â
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I was like, âWhat is a furlough?
Whatâs going on?â
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I couldnât work.
I couldnât go in.
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We werenât even allowed to check email.
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So I ended up picking up side jobs
trying to make ends-meet.
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These are all the agenciesÂ
of the federal government.
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Here are the ones that actually shutdown in 1996.
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And in 2019.
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Shutdowns don't have to beÂ
of the whole government.
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So it might just be that one setÂ
of agencies didn't get funded.
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Congress couldn't reach agreementÂ
with each other and with the president
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on whether that set of agencies would get funded.
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But the rest of the governmentÂ
was funded perfectly well.
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In 2019, around 800,000 federal employeesÂ
didnât get a paycheck for 35 days.
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But more than half of themÂ
still had to go into work.
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Because there are some jobsÂ
that the Attorney General said
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are exempt from stopping completely,
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what we call âessentialâ employees.
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So while the Department ofÂ
Transportation was shut down,
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air traffic controllers still had to work.
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I donât show up with a headsetÂ
and just do that job by myself.
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All the other aviation safety professionalsÂ
that assist us and help us on a daily basis Â
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are now taken away.
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Homeland Security shut down butÂ
TSA workers still had to show up.
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Without pay.
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Weâre one of the lowest paid agencies.
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Not receiving a check every two weeks was hard.
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People on the floor wereÂ
smiling and greeting everyone,
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but behind closed doors in the breakÂ
room we had people breaking down.
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National Parks lost millions in entry fees.
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Wildfire mitigation projects were delayed.
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Immigration court hearings â backlogged.
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And, there were thousands of contractorsÂ
that work with all of these agencies
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who were also affected.
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If you were just working onÂ
a contract with a company,
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you did not get back pay.
At all.
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My son has chronic asthma âÂ
couldnât afford his medicine.
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I felt like I was...
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I was disappointed in them
and it wasnât even my fault.
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And a shutdown isnât justÂ
centralized in Washington, DC.
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Only 15 percent of all federalÂ
employees live in that area.
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Which means the economic-impact is country-wide.
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Shutting down not onlyÂ
affects the federal workers.
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If people arenât getting paid,Â
theyâre not going out to eat.
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There is a severe economic impact
to something like that,
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especially in a town like Huntsville.
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Overall, the US economy lost $11Â billion
during the 2019 shutdown.
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Some of that was regained whenÂ
employees received their back pay,
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but the damage was done.
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And the thing is, this doesn't have to happen.
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The legal framework explains why we end upÂ
having to have shutdowns as a matter of law.
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But why we have shutdownsÂ
truly is a matter of politics,
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which is that the more polarized the partiesÂ
are and the more divided our government is,
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the harder time Congress and the presidentÂ
have working out a budget agreement.
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And having divisive politicsÂ
isnât uniquely American.
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In Belgium, there have been timesÂ
where the politics were so bad,
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they just didnât have a government.
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We didnât really notice any difference.
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Our daily lives didnât really change much.
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I donât think the governmentÂ
could really like â stop.
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Most countries couldnât.
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In nearly every other country,
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if the government were to failÂ
to pass a budget by the deadline,
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agencies would just continueÂ
working with last yearâs budget.
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Thereâs a push to do that in the US, too.
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Just have an automatic, temporary appropriationsÂ
bill pass when the deadline is missed.
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The opposing argument toÂ
that is "Whoa, whoa, whoa."
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"This is the one time we have every year to reset
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and to kind of work things out andÂ
so where would the incentive go?"
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Congress has passed fewerÂ
and fewer laws each year.
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Passing these appropriations bills has become Â
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the one time theyâre kind ofÂ
forced to agree on something.
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And as the political ideology of eachÂ
Congress grows further apart each year,
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the likelihood of them agreeingÂ
on time kind of goes down.
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So every fall...
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"Washingtonâs version of groundhog day."
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"Another government shutdown looms."
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We are caught as pawns -
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Pawns in an ultimate game as a federal employeeÂ
in a conversation that has nothing to do with us.
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Weâre not going to workÂ
increasing the profit of a CEO.
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Weâre doing public services and now IâmÂ
not going to get a paycheck? Thatâs crazy.
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